Patents Examined by Bryce Aisaka
  • Patent number: 9858370
    Abstract: A method to generate a reduced delay twinaxial SPICE model is provided. The method may include measuring near-end S-parameter components and far-end S-parameter components of a twinaxial cable, reducing an original time delay of the far-end S-parameter components by multiplying each of the far-end S-parameter components by a complex exponential based on an equivalent delay length, a signal frequency, and an effective dielectric constant, simulating a signal transmitted across a twinaxial cable by running a 4-port SPICE model using the near-end S-parameter components and the multiplied far-end S-parameter components, and recording a magnitude and a phase of the transmitted signal with respect to frequency as outputs of the reduced delay twinaxial SPICE model.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 25, 2015
    Date of Patent: January 2, 2018
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: Zhaoqing Chen
  • Patent number: 9858382
    Abstract: A computer program product stored in a non-transitory storage device of an integrated circuit (IC) timing analysis device includes: a netlist reading module for reading a netlist of an integrated circuit; a signal path analysis module for analyzing signal paths of a clock signal to generate a simplified netlist of the integrated circuit; a clock delay calculating module for calculating clock delays of the clock signal respectively corresponding to the signal paths.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 7, 2015
    Date of Patent: January 2, 2018
    Assignee: REALTEK SEMICONDUCTOR CORPORATION
    Inventors: Ying-Chieh Chen, Mei-Li Yu, Ting-Hsiung Wang, Yu-Lan Lo, Shu-Yi Kao
  • Patent number: 9852252
    Abstract: A standard cell library and a method of using the same may include information regarding a plurality of standard cells stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, wherein at least one of the plurality of standard cells includes a pin through which an input signal or an output signal of the at least one standard cell passes and including first and second regions perpendicular to a stack direction. When the via is disposed in the pin, the second region can provide a resistance value of the via smaller than that of the first region. The standard cell library may further include marker information corresponding to the second region.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 16, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 26, 2017
    Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Sang-hoon Baek, Tae-joong Song, Jae-ho Park, Gi-young Yang, Jin-tae Kim, Hyo-sig Won
  • Patent number: 9852257
    Abstract: Embodiments include a computer implemented method comprising: while designing a chip, identifying a plurality of partitions in the chip, for a first partition of the plurality of partitions in the chip, identifying a plurality of pins configured to interconnect the first partition with one or more other partitions of the plurality of partitions of the chip, assigning a name to each of the plurality of pins associated with the first partition of the plurality of partitions, based on the names assigned to each of the plurality of pins, forming a plurality of groups such that each group of the plurality of groups is associated with a corresponding one or more pins of the plurality of pins, and based on forming the plurality of groups, designing a first subset of the plurality of pins to be located at close proximity in the chip.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 21, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 26, 2017
    Assignee: Marvell International Ltd.
    Inventor: Atchi Reddy Chavva
  • Patent number: 9852246
    Abstract: A system performing selected timing comparisons in a digital electronic design includes propagating from signal sources to timing comparisons of one or multiple signal labels. The signal label includes signal source identifiers and signal path cycle adjust information. Timing comparisons are determined in which signal label values at each input of the timing comparison are required to compute the selected timing comparisons. The propagation back from the timing comparisons are needed signal labels, followed by the propagation and computing timing data from the signal source applied to the propagated signal labels corresponding to the required signal labels.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 1, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 26, 2017
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: David J. Hathaway, Kerim Kalafala, Stephen G. Shuma, Chandramouli Visweswariah
  • Patent number: 9846755
    Abstract: According to an embodiment, a method for cell placement in a semiconductor layout is provided. The method includes: providing a first cell having two sides, each side configured as at least one of a source side and a drain side; providing a place-and-route boundary (prBoundary) of the first cell based on the configuration of the two sides of the first cell; providing a second cell having two sides, each side configured as at least one of a source side and a drain side; providing a prBoundary of the second cell based on the configuration of the two sides of the second cell; and placing the first cell and the second cell based on the prBoundary of the first cell and the prBoundary of the second cell.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 16, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 19, 2017
    Assignee: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited
    Inventors: Ming-Zhang Kuo, Lee-Chung Lu, Cheng-Chung Lin, Li-Chun Tien, Sang-Hoo Dhong, Ta-Pen Guo
  • Patent number: 9841672
    Abstract: A method of decomposing a layout of a semiconductor device for a quadruple patterning technology (QPT) process includes dividing the layout of the semiconductor device into a first temporary pattern, which includes rectangular features having a rectangular shape, and a second temporary pattern, which includes cross couple features having a Z-shape, generating a third temporary pattern and a fourth temporary pattern by performing a pattern dividing operation on the first temporary pattern in a first direction, generating a first target pattern and a second target pattern by incorporating each of the cross couple features included in the second temporary pattern into one of the third temporary pattern and the fourth temporary pattern, and generating first through fourth decomposed patterns by performing the pattern dividing operation on the first target pattern and the second target pattern in a second direction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 17, 2015
    Date of Patent: December 12, 2017
    Assignee: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Dae-Kwon Kang, Jae-Seok Yang, Sung-Wook Hwang, Dong-Gyun Kim, Ji-Young Jung
  • Patent number: 9837846
    Abstract: Systems and methods for enabling transfer of power, from a wireless charger or power supply, to one or more receivers placed on or near the wireless charger or power supply, including powering or charging one or multiple receivers or devices having small surface areas or volumes. In accordance with an embodiment, a receiver coil can be generally shaped as a blade or thin solenoid, which receives power inductively, which is then used to power or charge one or more electronic devices. Applications include inductive or magnetic charging and power, and particularly usage in mobile, electronic, electric, lighting, or other devices, batteries, power tools, kitchen, industrial, medical or dental, or military applications, vehicles, robots, trains, and other usages.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 14, 2014
    Date of Patent: December 5, 2017
    Assignee: Mojo Mobility, Inc.
    Inventor: Afshin Partovi
  • Patent number: 9830415
    Abstract: A method of designing a semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) is provided as follows. A standard cell library is generated. The standard cell library includes characteristic information for a plurality of standard cells. The characteristic information includes a characteristic of each standard cell. A characteristic change region is detected. The characteristic change region includes at least one of the plurality of standard cells by comparing characteristics of standard cells to be placed adjacent to the characteristic change region, based on the standard cell library. A characteristic of the at least one standard cell included in the detected characteristic change region is changed to one of the characteristics of the standard cells to be placed adjacent to the characteristic change region to update the standard cell library. A plurality of standard cells of the updated standard cell library is placed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 15, 2015
    Date of Patent: November 28, 2017
    Assignee: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Sang-kyu Oh, Sang-hoon Baek, Seung-young Lee, Tae-joong Song
  • Patent number: 9830420
    Abstract: A design support device having a permissible power supply fluctuation deriving unit and a target impedance deriving unit. The permissible power supply fluctuation deriving unit derives the fluctuation in the power supply voltage that is permissible on the basis of jitter-voltage correlation information, which indicates the correlation between the power supply voltage fluctuation generated in an I/O buffer and the jitter generated by the power supply voltage fluctuations, and jitter constraint information, which is for stably transmitting a signal, for the generated jitter. The target impedance deriving unit derives a target impedance in the permissible range of impedance for a power supply circuit, on the basis of information on the signal operating current flowing through the power supply circuit of the I/O buffer, and the power supply voltage fluctuation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 14, 2014
    Date of Patent: November 28, 2017
    Assignee: NEC Corporation
    Inventors: Masashi Ogawa, Manabu Kusumoto, Hisashi Ishida
  • Patent number: 9817937
    Abstract: A method of generating an area efficient power switch cell includes receiving, by a cell library design tool, a specification of a power switch circuit to be established as a power switch cell in a cell library. The cell library design tool also receives one or more attributes of the power switch cell including a height of the cell boundary and receiving, by the cell library design tool, a layout placement constraint requiring the power switch cell to be placed in a semiconductor layout so as to bridge two parallel rows of doped wells. The parallel rows of doped wells are interleaved with doped substrate and the doping of the wells is of a different type than that of the substrate. Based on the specification of the power switch circuit, the one or more attributes, and the layout placement constraint, the cell library design tool generates the power switch cell.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 12, 2015
    Date of Patent: November 14, 2017
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Shingo Suzuki, Karthik Rajagopal, Bo Tang
  • Patent number: 9817929
    Abstract: Disclosed herein are representative embodiments of methods, apparatus, and systems for performing formal verification of circuit descriptions. In certain example embodiments, the disclosed technology involves the formal verification of a register-transfer-level (“RTL”) circuit description produced from a high level synthesis tool (e.g., a C++ or SystemC synthesis tool) relative to the original high level code from which the RTL description was synthesized (e.g., the original C++ or SystemC description) using sub-functional-call-level transactions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 20, 2015
    Date of Patent: November 14, 2017
    Assignee: Calypto Design Systems, Inc.
    Inventors: Pankaj P. Chauhan, Sameer Kapoor, Saurabh Jain, Kunal Bindal, Bryan D. Bowyer, Andres R. Takach, Peter P. Gutberlet, Gagandeep Singh, Maheshinder Goyal
  • Patent number: 9817930
    Abstract: Various mechanisms identify an electronic design model and determine a data propagation diagram by receiving a set of path property sources or destinations, determine a set of helper properties for the data propagation diagram by traversing at least a portion of the data propagation diagram, and verify the electronic design model by examining one or more helper properties and determining verification of the one or more helper properties leads to concrete results to generate verification results. Data propagation diagrams may be annotated with verification results to show verification progresses, highlight sources of complexity, and be further synchronized with waveform displays of one or more traces. Search space may be trimmed during a verification flow to enhance performance of verification engine(s). New start states closer to the final state than the default state may be identified during verification and used to enhance performance of the verification engine.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 31, 2014
    Date of Patent: November 14, 2017
    Assignee: Cadence Design Systems Inc.
    Inventors: Caio Araujo Texeira Campos, Tamires Vargas Campanema Franco Santos, Andrea Iabrudi Tavares, Fabiano Peixoto, Claudionor Jose Nunes Coelho, Jr.
  • Patent number: 9811623
    Abstract: A method for generating a pattern includes defining a footprint of a main pattern in each cell, arranging a first cell and a second cell which has an auxiliary pattern outside the footprint of the main pattern, side by side in such a manner that the auxiliary pattern outside the footprint of the second cell is present in the footprint of the main pattern of the first cell, and generating the pattern of the mask by removing a pattern element of the auxiliary pattern outside the footprint of the second cell in a portion where the pattern element of the auxiliary pattern outside the footprint of the second cell is close to or overlaps with the main pattern in the first cell of the first cell and the second cell arranged side by side.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 17, 2015
    Date of Patent: November 7, 2017
    Assignee: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Hiroyuki Ishii, Ryo Nakayama, Tadashi Arai
  • Patent number: 9805156
    Abstract: This application discloses a computing system to pre-process a physical or geometric layout of a circuit design to determine various attributes of the nets, such as a location and a total capacitance for each net in the geometric layout. The computing system can order extraction of the nets from the geometric layout of the circuit design with a space filling curve based, at least in part, on the locations of the nets in the geometric layout of the circuit design and any coupling capacitance between the nets in the geometric layout of the circuit design. The computing system can selectively decouple nets with a coupling capacitance based, at least in part, on the total capacitance for the nets associated with the coupling capacitance. The computing system can generate an electrical representation for each of the extracted nets and write them to a netlist for the circuit design.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 27, 2013
    Date of Patent: October 31, 2017
    Assignee: Mentor Graphics Corporation
    Inventors: David J. Gurney, Sandeep Koranne, Mingchao Wang
  • Patent number: 9798849
    Abstract: A method of detecting stress of an integrated circuit including first and second patterns formed from different materials may comprise: determining one or more stress detection points of the first pattern; dividing a region including a first stress detection point of the one or more stress detection points into a plurality of divided regions; calculating areas of the second pattern at the divided regions; and/or detecting a stress level applied to the first stress detection point of the first pattern by the second pattern based on the areas of the second pattern at the divided regions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 16, 2015
    Date of Patent: October 24, 2017
    Assignee: SAMSUNG EELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Jae-Pil Shin, Chang-Woo Kang, Jong-Won Kim, Ho-Joon Lee, Kyu-Baik Chang, Won-Young Chung
  • Patent number: 9798843
    Abstract: A statistical timing analysis using statistical timing macro-models considering statistical timing value entries such as input slew and output load is disclosed. That statistical timing analysis calculates a statistical timing quantity based on statistical timing value entries based on a statistical timing (ST) macro-model of a selected macro of an integrated circuit (IC) design that includes statistical timing quantities as a function of deterministic timing value entries.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 15, 2015
    Date of Patent: October 24, 2017
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Jin Hu, SheshaShayee K. Raghunathan, Debjit Sinha, Vladimir P. Zolotov
  • Patent number: 9779201
    Abstract: According to one general aspect, a method may include receiving a digital circuit model that includes models of a clock mesh and a plurality of logic circuits, each logic circuit associated with end-points of the logic circuit. The method may also include identifying a cluster of end-points, wherein the cluster is associated with a common version of the clock signal. The method may also include identifying an associated skew-schedule for each end-point. The method may include determining a timing slack and skew schedule for each end-point within the cluster. The method may include adjusting a clock-gater cell, based upon a common push/pull schedule associated with the cluster. The method may further include inserting, for at least one end-point of the cluster, a skew-buffer, wherein a variant of the skew-buffer for a respective end-point is based upon a difference between the end-point's skew schedule and the common push/pull schedule.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 14, 2015
    Date of Patent: October 3, 2017
    Assignee: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Brian Millar, Ahsan Chowdhury, Suhail Ahmed, Matthew Berzins, Jinkyu Lee
  • Patent number: 9773082
    Abstract: Methods and systems provide aspects of electronics layout design including copying of layout element(s) and graphically defining a one-to-one correspondence between two elements. An exemplary method may include defining a cloning constraint for a layout, rendering a user interface (UI) to display at least one of a schematic and form representation of the layout, and receiving a selection of at least one element in the layout. The method may create a movable drag set based on the selection, and responsive to a matching of at least one element of the drag set with another element in the layout, performing a one-to-one correspondence for the matched elements. The matching may be an overlap of at least one element in the drag set with an element in the layout having the same master.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 16, 2015
    Date of Patent: September 26, 2017
    Assignee: CADENCE DESIGNS SYSTEMS, INC.
    Inventors: Fabrice Raymond Morlat, Gerard Tarroux, Fabien Campana
  • Patent number: 9767238
    Abstract: One example includes an RQL circuit simulation system. The system includes a circuit design tool that facilitates user inputs to design an RQL circuit design comprising at least one predetermined RQL circuit design component. The system also includes a memory system that stores the RQL circuit design and an RQL component library comprising predetermined RQL circuit design components from which the at least one predetermined RQL circuit design component is selected. Each of the predetermined RQL circuit design components includes predetermined RQL component metrics associated with performance of the respective one of the predetermined RQL circuit design components. The system also includes a circuit simulator configured to compile performance metrics associated with the RQL circuit design based on the predetermined RQL component metrics associated with the respective at least one of the predetermined RQL circuit design components and to simulate the RQL circuit design based on the performance metrics.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 14, 2015
    Date of Patent: September 19, 2017
    Assignee: Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation
    Inventors: Oliver T. Oberg, Steven B. Shauck