The present invention relates in general to verifying that current design parameters pertaining to a given component, such as an electronic chip, have been complied with in a given CAD (computer aided design) device design.
The manufacturers of components, such as electronic data chips, have a set of rules and restrictions on the use of the chips, how the pins are connected or left unconnected, the value of components to be connected to the pins, and so forth. As a majority of circuit design problems concern the design of electronic chips, as opposed to many other components used in electronic circuit design, the word xe2x80x9cchipxe2x80x9d will be used primarily henceforth, although the present discussion applies to any components, groups of components or even relative physical placement of components included in electronic circuit design for which design rules may be generated. As xe2x80x9cbugsxe2x80x9d (design errors and so forth) in electronic chips are discovered and corrected, these rules and restrictions often change. The changes may be so buried in documentation that they may be hard to detect by a circuit designer. This is especially true where the circuit designer has used a given chip in previous circuit designs. Further, the latest data relative the design of a chip may have been misplaced, not ordered from the manufacturer or is otherwise unavailable to the circuit designer.
When the circuit is tested and found not to work, the design information, along with a sample of the circuit, is often physically sent to the manufacturer of the chip believed to be causing the problem with a request for help. An expert at circuit design debugging will then examine the circuit diagram and any supporting data in an attempt to ascertain if any pins on the chip were incorrectly connected.
As is known to circuit designers, many rules and stipulations are placed on appropriate circuit design relative a given manufacturers"" chip. If these rules are not complied with, the manufacturer will not take any responsibility for failure or inoperability of the chip in the circuit. Examples of some of these conditions are set forth in the remainder of this paragraph. Some pins on a chip are for test purposes only and are never to be connected to anything. Other pins must be connected to ground or specific voltage levels (or be maintained within a given range of voltages) with respect to ground. It may be required that certain components, such as capacitors or resistors within a given range of values and even of specific composition, be connected to certain pins. Further, some pins must be connected together with path conductors having less than a given length and/or resistance for certain applications.
Even an expert may face a very time-consuming task in examining a detailed circuit diagram, making sure that the expert""s knowledge of all chip design rules is current, and so forth.
In view of the above, it would thus be advantageous to automate the examination process of comparing any CAD design and, especially, an electronic circuit design with the latest set of rules applicable to an electronic chip used in a given circuit design. It would further be advantageous to be able to minimize the time necessary to provide the appropriate circuit design information to the manufacturer and return a list of detected problems to the circuit designer. Finally, it would be desirable to know that the design rules being used in the examination are complete and current.
The foregoing disadvantages are overcome by the present invention, which comprises a verification engine including a complete and current set of rules and annotations pertinent to a given electronic component and circuitry for comparing detailed circuit design data of a specific circuit with those rules and annotations and producing a discrepancy output report as well as a high-lighted visual presentation of problem areas. The verification engine of a manufacturer or supplier of an electronic chip may be a programmed computer interconnected over a network, such as the Internet, to a client or customer""s computer. The supplier""s computer is designed for both receiving and storing the design data of a customer and returning data for generating written and/or visual reports of any circuit design violations detected along with the latest rules where deemed appropriate.