Post-Routing Redundant Via Insertion with Wire Spreading Capability

Abstract

Redundant via insertion is a widely recommended technique to enhance the via yield and reliability. In this paper, the post-routing redundant via insertion problem is transformed to a mixed bipartite-conflict graph matching problem, and an efficient heuristic minimum weighted matching (HMWM) algorithm is presented to solve it. The developed method not only inserts redundant vias for alive vias but also protects the dead vias by utilizing the wire spreading capability- that's to say, the method shifts wires into the empty space and adds redundant vias for dead vias to further enhance the via yield. Experimental results show that the average insertion rate of alive vias is 99.54% with a short run time, and the wire spreading technique can achieve average insertion rate to be 54.41% for dead vias.