Integrated circuit (IC) having IC floorplan silhouette-like power supply net, and sea of supply (SoS) electronic design automation (EDA) tool for designing same
View Patent ↗An integrated circuit (IC) having an IC floorplan silhouette-like power supply net, and a computer executable Sea of Supply (SoS) Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tool for automatically designing same. An IC floorplan silhouette-like power supply net preferably includes both a Sea-of-Supply (SoS) power net and a Sea-of-Supply (SoS) ground net each exclusively occupying different layers of the two lowermost metal layers of an interconnect structure overlying its underlying transistor embedded silicon based structure. The SoS nets are the logical complement of preferably all the exempt areas of an IC floorplan.
1. An Integrated Circuit (IC) comprising a transistor embedded silicon based substrate and an interconnect structure including at least three metal layers for power routing purposes and transistor interconnection purposes, the IC having at least one power consuming entity having at least one VDD port for electrical connection to a power net of an IC power supply net and at least one GND port for electrical connection to a ground net of said IC power supply net, said at least one power consuming entity being graphically representable as an exempt area on an IC floorplan of the IC, at least one of said power net and said ground net being constituted by a Sea-of-Supply (SoS) net exclusively occupying a single metal layer of said interconnect structure, and being the logical complement of all the exempt areas bounded by a SoS net boundary itself bounded by the boundary of the IC floorplan.
2. The IC according to claim 1 wherein a SoS net occupies the lowermost metal layer immediately overlying the silicon based substrate.
3. The IC according to claim 1 wherein a SoS power net and a SoS ground net occupy adjacent metal layers.
4. The IC according to claim 3 wherein a SoS net occupies the lowermost metal layer immediately overlying the silicon based substrate.
5. The IC according to claim 1 wherein a SoS net boundary is substantially congruent with the boundary of the IC floorplan.