Practice of LPE Rule File Generation by Exact

Introduction

This article will show how you can create LPE rule files using EXACT’s LISA scripting functionality. We will concentrate on generating a technology file for parasitic capacitance extraction with HIPEX-C. The same principals can be applied to other rule-base LPE tools.

The Structure of a LISA Script to Generate LPE Rule Files

EXACT generates an LPE rule file for parasitic C extraction which contains two parts: one is for overlapping capacitances between a pair of layers, and the other is for lateral capacitances for a single layer. You can write a LISA script for each of those parts separately for easier maintenance.

EXACT allows you to use the LOAD command to execute multiple LISA scripts to generate LPE rule files separately. You can merge those generated rule files using a shell command such as “cat”. You can use those shell commands with the LISA function ’sh(“<shell command>”);’ in your script. See Example 1.

You can write some description independent of EXACT’s simulation, such as comments or layer derivation commands, using the WRITE command in LISA directly. You can merge those descriptions prepared as another separate text file.