Defect avoidance methods are likely to play a key role in overcoming the challenge of mask blank defectivity in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. In this work, we propose an innovative EUV mask defect avoidance method. It is the first approach that allows exploring all the degrees of freedom available for defect avoidance (pattern shift, rotation and mask floorplanning). We model the defec...

We present a theorem which characterizes all feasible retimings for a strongly-connected graph. For such graphs, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the achievability of a chosen target retiming. We describe an application which combines floorplanning and retiming which utilizes this characterization. Experimental results show our techniques yield superior clock frequencies with a m...

We present an ordered tree (O tree) structure to represent nonslicing floorplans. The O tree uses only (2 + lg ) bits for a floorplan of rectangular blocks. We define an admissible placement as a compacted placement in both and directions. For each admissible placement, we can find an O-tree representation. We show that the number of possible O-tree combinations is O( !2 2 1 ). This is very con...