A novel geometric resizing technique for data conversion from CAD data to electron beam exposure data

A novel resizing algorithm, based on the effective use of the hierarchical structure of CAD data, is proposed to speed up the conversion time for CAD data conversion into electron beam exposure data. Resizing can be performed even for overlap between cells, which has been usually allowed in CAD data and has interrupted the hierarchical treatment in the data conversion, by introducing three key techniques: cut and abandon, link mark, and null edge. The total conversion time of a 13 K-gate LSI circuit is improved by a factor of 3.8, with the shape handling time by a factor of 5.1, compared with a conventional method. Experimental results show that overhead can be ignored by introducing the new techniques in hierarchical treatment