Photonics design tool for advanced CMOS nodes

• Published in: IET optoelectronics Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 163 - 167
• Main Authors: Alloatti, Luca, Wade, Mark, Stojanovic, Vladimir, Popovic, Milos, Ram, Rajeev Jagga
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Institution of Engineering and Technology 01.08.2015
• Subjects: Algorithms; automatic generation; Automation; auto‐routing; Boolean operations; Cadence; CMOS integrated circuits; complementary metal‐oxide semiconductor nodes; Computer programs; Design engineering; electronic design automation; integrated optoelectronics; layouts; low‐level procedures; mainstream electric design automation software; Manhattan discretisation; Metal oxide semiconductors; photonic design automation tool; Photonics; scripting language; Semiconductors; sizing operations; SKILL; Skills; software‐defined waveguide ports; Special Issue: Selected papers from the European Conference on Integrated Optics 2014; waveguide connections; Boolean operations; mainstream electric design automation software; waveguide connections; complementary metal-oxide semiconductor nodes; scripting language; photonic design automation tool; SKILL; integrated optoelectronics; sizing operations; Cadence; low-level procedures; layouts; software-defined waveguide ports; Manhattan discretisation; CMOS integrated circuits; electronic design automation; auto-routing; automatic generation
• ISSN: 1751-8768; 1751-8776; 1751-8776
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-opt.2015.0003

Recently, the authors have demonstrated large-scale integrated systems with several million transistors and hundreds of photonic elements. Yielding such large-scale integrated systems requires a design-for-manufacture rigour that is embodied in the 10 000 to 50 000 design rules that these designs must comply within advanced complementary metal-oxide semiconductor manufacturing. Here, the authors present a photonic design automation tool which allows automatic generation of layouts without design-rule violations. This tool is written in SKILL, the native language of the mainstream electric design automation software, Cadence®. This allows seamless integration of photonic and electronic design in a single environment. The tool leverages intuitive photonic layer definitions, allowing the designer to focus on the physical properties rather than on technology-dependent details. For the first time the authors present an algorithm for removal of design-rule violations from photonic layouts based on Manhattan discretisation, Boolean and sizing operations. This algorithm is not limited to the implementation in SKILL, and can in principle be implemented in any scripting language. Connectivity is achieved with software-defined waveguide ports and low-level procedures that enable auto-routing of waveguide connections.