| Popis: |
Mask data preparation (MDP) systems are becoming more and more complicated due to increasing demand for higher resolution, and more commonly adopted technique of optical proximity correction (OPC). Conventionally, as a standard format to describe mask patterns, GDSII has been widely used in the EDA field as well as in the mask production field. These days, however, GDSII is revealing its disadvantage in terms of efficiency in data compaction. On the other hand, mask pattern data in a variety of formats, including GDSII, are flowing into mask manufacturers, and this is making their process extremely complicated. In this paper, we propose a unified format, tentatively named "GDSII-NEO." GDSII-NEO is designed to retain GDSII upper compatibility in consideration of the utilization of existing GDSII data and to have several times higher compression rate than GDSII. GDSII-NEO can be seen as a multi-purpose format used widely in the EDA and mask field. An intended use, among others, of this format is to describe the pattern data fed into Electron Beam (EB) mask writers. |
