System and method for lithography simulation
First Claim
1. A system for simulating a lithographic design comprised of a plurality of polygons arranged in a predetermined configuration, the system comprising:
- a microprocessor subsystem to convert the plurality of polygons to a pixel-based bitmap representation thereof, wherein the pixel-based bitmap includes pixel data, and wherein each pixel datum represents a pixel having a predetermined pixel size; and
an accelerator subsystem, coupled to the microprocessor subsystem, to calculate at least a portion of an aerial image of the lithographic design using the pixel-based bitmap representation of the lithographic design, wherein the hardware accelerator subsystem includes a plurality of programmable gate arrays configured to process the pixel data in parallel.
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Abstract
There are many inventions described and illustrated herein. In one aspect, the present invention is directed to a technique of, and system for simulating, verifying, inspecting, characterizing, determining and/or evaluating the lithographic designs, techniques and/or systems, and/or individual functions performed thereby or components used therein. In one embodiment, the present invention is a system and method that accelerates lithography simulation, inspection, characterization and/or evaluation of the optical characteristics and/or properties, as well as the effects and/or interactions of lithographic systems and processing techniques. In this regard, in one embodiment, the present invention employs a lithography simulation system architecture, including application-specific hardware accelerators, and a processing technique to accelerate and facilitate verification, characterization and/or inspection of a mask design, for example, RET design, including detailed simulation and characterization of the entire lithography process to verify that the design achieves and/or provides the desired results on final wafer pattern. The system includes: (1) general purpose-type computing device(s) to perform the case-based logic having branches and inter-dependency in the data handling and (2) accelerator subsystems to perform a majority of the computation intensive tasks.
156 Citations
35 Claims
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1. A system for simulating a lithographic design comprised of a plurality of polygons arranged in a predetermined configuration, the system comprising:
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a microprocessor subsystem to convert the plurality of polygons to a pixel-based bitmap representation thereof, wherein the pixel-based bitmap includes pixel data, and wherein each pixel datum represents a pixel having a predetermined pixel size; and
an accelerator subsystem, coupled to the microprocessor subsystem, to calculate at least a portion of an aerial image of the lithographic design using the pixel-based bitmap representation of the lithographic design, wherein the hardware accelerator subsystem includes a plurality of programmable gate arrays configured to process the pixel data in parallel. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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19. A system for simulating a lithographic design, the system comprising:
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a microprocessor subsystem, including a plurality of microprocessors, to convert the lithographic design to a pixel-based bitmap representation thereof, wherein the pixel-based bitmap includes pixel data, and wherein each pixel datum represents a pixel having a predetermined pixel size; and
a plurality of accelerator subsystems, each accelerator subsystem includes a plurality of programmable integrated circuits configured to process the pixel data in parallel and each accelerator subsystem is connected to an associated microprocessor to calculate a portion of an aerial image of the lithographic design using the corresponding portion of the pixel-based bitmap representation of the lithographic design. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35)
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Specification