An exhaustive method for characterizing the interconnect capacitance considering the floating dummy-fills by employing an efficient field solving algorithm

This paper presents an exhaustive method to characterize the interconnect capacitances while taking the floating dummy-fills into account. Results of the case study with typical floating dummy-fills show that the inter-layer capacitances are also an important factor in the electrical consideration for the dummy-fills. An efficient field solving algorithm is implemented into the 3D finite-difference solver and its computational efficiency is compared with the industry-standard RAPHAEL. Furthermore, the overall flow for extracting the parasitic capacitance considering the dummy-fills at the full-chip level is discussed and the underlying assumption is examined.