Analyzing the effects of floating dummy-fills: from feature scale analysis to full-chip RC extraction

Studies the effects of dummy-fills on the interconnect capacitance and the global planarity of chips in order to provide the design guideline of the dummy-fills. A simple but accurate full-chip RC extraction methodology taking the floating dummy-fills into account is proposed and applied to the analysis of changes in capacitance and signal delay of the global interconnects, for the first time. The results for 0.18 /spl mu/m designs clearly demonstrate the importance of considering floating dummy-fills in the interconnect modeling and the full-chip RC extraction.