Engineering change using spare cells with constant insertion

Abstract

In the VLSI design process, a design implementation often needs to be corrected because of new specifications or design constraint violations. This correction process is referred to as engineering change (EC). Usually, an EC problem is resolved by using spare cells, which have been inserted into the unused spaces of a chip. In this paper, we propose an iterative method to generate feasible mapping solutions for an EC problem considering spare cells whose inputs may be tied to Vdd or Gnd, called constant insertion. Applying constant insertion can increase a cell's flexibility in aspect of functionalities, so far-away spare cells need not be used just for some specific functionality. Our experimental results show that the area in which there are enough spare cells for a mapping solution with constant insertion is only 82% of the area without constant insertion. © 2007 IEEE.