Very large scale integrated circuits (VLSI) are at the heart of modern information and communication systems. As VLSI technologies advancing into the nanometer era, major innovations in the design of computer-aided design (CAD) software are needed in order to design and manufacture future generations of complex VLSI systems. The PI proposes to develop novel techniques to solve a number of critical problems. This project focuses on: (1) development of an ultra-fast methodology to OPC, a key enabling software technology in nano-scale silicon chip fabrication. (2) The design of fundamental algorithms for chip-level wiring which can minimize geometric variations to be introduced by the photo-lithography process in chip manufacturing. (3) development of a CAD system for board-level wiring of high-end packages, a problem which has to be solved manually in a time-consuming fashion today. (4) design of an ultra-fast placement algorithm (to determine optimal locations for huge number of circuit components on a chip) which can handle the complexity of future chip designs. (5) development of power-grid analysis algorithms based on higher-order iterative methods which have the potential to solve very large power-grid problems in minutes, a dramatic improvement over existing algorithms.
