Layout Uniformity: A metric for yield enhancement

The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between the layout features and the DFM flow effectiveness. First, a brief overview of the Design for Manufacturing (DfM) techniques used in yield aware RTL-to-GDSII design flow is given. This overview points out the possible relationship between the layout feature, i.e. density and uniformity and the DFM effectiveness. In order to validate layout uniformity as a first order metric to quantify layout sensitivity to DfM improvement, experiment is performed on industrial test case. The results of this experiment validate clearly that layout uniformity improvement correlates with CA and Lithography improvements.