Abstract: Electrical rule checking techniques for analyzing integrated circuit design data to identify specified circuit element configurations. Both tools and methods implementing these techniques may be employed to identify circuit element configurations using both logical and physical layout information for the design data. A set of commands are provided that will allow a user to program a programmable electrical rule check tool to identify a wide variety of circuit element configurations, using both logical and physical layout data, as desired by the user.

Abstract: A technique is provided for determining a hierarchical effectiveness for a cell in a data structure. The hierarchical effectiveness indicates how effective the use of the cell will be in executing a task with the data structure. A technique is also provided for determining the hierarchical effectiveness of all of the cells in a data structure, to determine which cells should be employed to execute a task with the data structure.

Abstract: An alternate display content controller provides a technique for controlling a video display separately from and in addition to the content displayed on the operating system monitor. Where the display is a computer monitor, the alternate display content controller interacts with the computer utility operating system and hardware drivers to control allocation of display space and create and control one or more parallel graphical user interfaces adjacent the operating system desktop. An alternate display content controller may be incorporated in either hardware or software. As software, an alternate display content controller may be an application running on the computer operating system, or may include an operating system kernel of varying complexity ranging from dependent on the utility operating system for hardware system services to a parallel system independent of the utility operating system and capable of supporting dedicated applications.