Rectangle-based Technique for Extracting Objects from Polygon Layouts

A new and efficient layout object extraction technique is presented in this paper, which is to be used in technology migration or hard-U reuse. The technique models the original polygon layout represented by a set of edges as a set of connected or overlapped rectangles. The rectangle model provides easy and efficient recognition, extraction, resizing, and compaction of layout objects such as transistors, contacts, and wires. Experiments on several designs from simple standard cells to more complex designs using standard and/or custom cells demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique.