Provably good and practically efficient algorithms for CMP

• Published in: 2009 46th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference pp. 539 - 544
• Main Authors: Chunyang Feng, Hai Zhou, Changhao Yan, Jun Tao, Xuan Zeng
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.07.2009
• Subjects: Algorithm design and analysis; Approximation algorithms; Computer aided manufacturing; Covering Linear Programming; Design for Manufacturability; Dummy Fill Problem; Filling; Iterative algorithms; Permission; Polynomials; Runtime; Surfaces; Tiles
• ISBN: 9781605584973; 1605584975
• ISSN: 0738-100X

To reduce chip-scale topography variation in chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process, dummy fill is widely used to improve the layout density uniformity. Previous researches formulated the dummy fill problem as a standard linear program (LP). However, solving the huge linear program formed by real-life designs is very expensive and has become the hurdle in deploying the technology. Even though there exist efficient heuristics, their performance cannot be guaranteed. In this paper, we develop a dummy fill algorithm that is both efficient and with provably good performance. It is based on a fully polynomial time approximation scheme [Fleischer, 2004 ] for covering LP problems. Furthermore, based on the approximation algorithm, we also propose a new greedy iterative algorithm to achieve high quality solutions more efficiently than previous Monte-Carlo based heuristic methods. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithms.