Provided by:
magic_7.5.214-1_i386 
NAME
ext - format of .ext files produced by Magic's hierarchical extractor
DESCRIPTION
Magic's extractor produces a .ext file for each cell in a hierarchical
design. The .ext file for cell name is name.ext. This file contains
three kinds of information: environmental information (scaling,
timestamps, etc), the extracted circuit corresponding to the mask
geometry of cell name, and the connections between this mask geometry
and the subcells of name.
A .ext file consists of a series of lines, each of which begins with a
keyword. The keyword beginning a line determines how the remainder of
the line is interpreted. The following set of keywords define the
environmental information:
tech techname
Identifies the technology of cell name as techname, e.g, nmos,
cmos.
timestamp time
Identifies the time when cell name was last modified. The value
time is the time stored by Unix, i.e, seconds since 00:00 GMT
January 1, 1970. Note that this is not the time name was
extracted, but rather the timestamp value stored in the .mag
file. The incremental extractor compares the timestamp in each
.ext file with the timestamp in each .mag file in a design; if
they differ, that cell is re-extracted.
version version
Identifies the version of .ext format used to write name.ext.
The current version is 5.1.
style style
Identifies the style that the cell has been extracted with.
scale rscale cscale lscale
Sets the scale to be used in interpreting resistance,
capacitance, and linear dimension values in the remainder of the
.ext file. Each resistance value must be multiplied by rscale
to give the real resistance in milliohms. Each capacitance
value must be multiplied by cscale to give the real capacitance
in attofarads. Each linear dimension (e.g, width, height,
transform coordinates) must be multiplied by lscale to give the
real linear dimension in centimicrons. Also, each area
dimension (e.g, transistor channel area) must be multiplied by
scale*scale to give the real area in square centimicrons. At
most one scale line may appear in a .ext file. If none appears,
all of rscale, cscale, and lscale default to 1.
resistclasses r1 r2 ...
Sets the resistance per square for the various resistance
classes appearing in the technology file. The values r1, r2,
etc. are in milliohms; they are not scaled by the value of
rscale specified in the scale line above. Each node in a .ext
file has a perimeter and area for each resistance class; the
values r1, r2, etc. are used to convert these perimeters and
areas into actual node resistances. See ``Magic Tutorial #8:
Circuit Extraction'' for a description of how resistances are
computed from perimeters and areas by the program ext2sim.
The following keywords define the circuit formed by the mask
information in cell name. This circuit is extracted independently of
any subcells; its connections to subcells are handled by the keywords
in the section after this one.
node name R C x y type a1 p1 a2 p2 ... aN pN
Defines an electrical node in name. This node is referred to by
the name name in subsequent equiv lines, connections to the
terminals of transistors in fet lines, and hierarchical
connections or adjustments using merge or adjust. The node has
a total capacitance to ground of C attofarads, and a lumped
resistance of R milliohms. For purposes of going back from the
node name to the geometry defining the node, (x,y) is the
coordinate of a point inside the node, and type is the layer on
which this point appears. The values a1, p1, ... aN, pN are the
area and perimeter for the material in each of the resistance
classes described by the resistclasses line at the beginning of
the .ext file; these values are used to compute adjusted
hierarchical resistances more accurately. NOTE: since many
analysis tools compute transistor gate capacitance themselves
from the transistor's area and perimeter, the capacitance
between a node and substrate (GND!) normally does not include
the capacitance from transistor gates connected to that node.
If the .sim file was produced by ext2sim(1), check the
technology file that was used to produce the original .ext files
to see whether transistor gate capacitance is included or
excluded; see ``Magic Maintainer's Manual #2: The Technology
File'' for details.
attr name xl yl xh yh type text
One of these lines appears for each label ending in the
character ``@'' that was attached to geometry in the node name.
The location of each attribute label (xl yl xh yh) and the type
of material to which it was attached (type) are given along with
the text of the label minus the trailing ``@'' character (text).
equiv node1 node2
Defines two node names in cell name as being equivalent: node1
and node2. In a collection of node names related by equiv
lines, exactly one must be defined by a node line described
above.
fet type xl yl xh yh area perim sub GATE T1 T2 ...
Defines a transistor in name. The kind of transistor is type, a
string that comes from the technology file and is intended to
have meaning to simulation programs. The coordinates of a
square entirely contained in the gate region of the transistor
are (xl, yl) for its lower-left and (xh, yh) for its upper-
right. All four coordinates are in the name's coordinate space,
and are subject to scaling as described in scale above. The
gate region of the transistor has area area square centimicrons
and perimeter perim centimicrons. The substrate of the
transistor is connected to node sub.
The remainder of a fet line consists of a series of triples:
GATE, T1, .... Each describes one of the terminals of the
transistor; the first describes the gate, and the remainder
describe the transistor's non-gate terminals (e.g, source and
drain). Each triple consists of the name of a node connecting
to that terminal, a terminal length, and an attribute list. The
terminal length is in centimicrons; it is the length of that
segment of the channel perimeter connecting to adjacent
material, such as polysilicon for the gate or diffusion for a
source or drain.
The attribute list is either the single token ``0'', meaning no
attributes, or a comma-separated list of strings. The strings
in the attribute list come from labels attached to the
transistor. Any label ending in the character ``^'' is
considered a gate attribute and appears on the gate's attribute
list, minus the trailing ``^''. Gate attributes may lie either
along the border of a channel or in its interior. Any label
ending in the character ``$'' is considered a non-gate
attribute. It appears on the list of the terminal along which
it lies, also minus the trailing ``$''. Non-gate attributes may
only lie on the border of the channel.
The keywords in this section describe information that is not processed
hierarchically: path lengths and accurate resistances that are computed
by flattening an entire node and then producing a value for the
flattened node.
killnode node
During resistance extraction, it is sometimes necessary to break
a node up into several smaller nodes. The appearance of a
killnode line during the processing of a .ext file means that
all information currently accumulated about node, along with all
fets that have a terminal connected to node, should be thrown
out; it will be replaced by information later in the .ext file.
The order of processing .ext files is important in order for
this to work properly: children are processed before their
parents, so a killnode in a parent overrides one in a child.
resist node1 node2 R
Defines a resistor of R milliohms between the two nodes node1
and node2. Both names are hierarchical.
distance name1 name2 dmin dmax
Gives the distance between two electrical terminals name1 (a
driver) and name2 (a receiver). Note that these are terminals
and not nodes: the names (which are hierarchical label names)
are used to specify two different locations on the same
electrical node. The two distances, dmin and dmax, are the
lengths (in lambda) of the shortest and longest acyclic paths
between the driver and receiver.
The keywords in this last section describe the subcells used by name,
and how connections are made to and between them.
use def use-id TRANSFORM
Specifies that cell def with instance identifier use-id is a
subcell of cell name. If cell def is arrayed, then use-id will
be followed by two bracketed subscript ranges of the form:
[lo,hi,sep]. The first range is for x, and the second for y.
The subscripts for a given dimension are lo through hi
inclusive, and the separation between adjacent array elements is
sep centimicrons.
TRANSFORM is a set of six integers that describe how coordinates
in def are to be transformed to coordinates in the parent name.
It is used by ext2sim(1) in transforming transistor locations to
coordinates in the root of a design. The six integers of
TRANSFORM (ta, tb, tc, td, te, tf) are interpreted as components
in the following transformation matrix, by which all coordinates
in def are post-multiplied to get coordinates in name:
ta td 0
tb te 0
tc tf 1
merge path1 path2 C a1 p1 a2 p2 ... aN pN
Used to specify a connection between two subcells, or between a
subcell and mask information of name. Both path1 and path2 are
hierarchical node names. To refer to a node in cell name
itself, its pathname is just its node name. To refer to a node
in a subcell of name, its pathname consists of the use-id of the
subcell (as it appeared in a use line above), followed by a
slash (/), followed by the node name in the subcell. For
example, if name contains subcell sub with use identifier sub-
id, and sub contains node n, the full pathname of node n
relative to name will be sub-id/n.
Connections between adjacent elements of an array are represented using
a special syntax that takes advantage of the regularity of arrays. A
use-id in a path may optionally be followed by a range of the form
[lo:hi] (before the following slash). Such a use-id is interpreted as
the elements lo through hi inclusive of a one-dimensional array. An
element of a two-dimensional array may be subscripted with two such
ranges: first the y range, then the x range.
Whenever one path in a merge line contains such a subscript range, the
other must contain one of comparable size. For example,
merge sub-id[1:4,2:8]/a sub-id[2:5,1:7]/b
is acceptable because the range 1:4 is the same size as 2:5, and the
range 2:8 is the same size as 1:7.
When a connection occurs between nodes in different cells, it may be
that some resistance and capacitance has been recorded redundantly.
For example, polysilicon in one cell may overlap polysilicon in
another, so the capacitance to substrate will have been recorded twice.
The values C, a1, p1, etc. in a merge line provide a way of
compensating for such overlap. Each of a1, p1, etc. (usually negative)
are added to the area and perimeter for material of each resistance
class to give an adjusted area and perimeter for the aggregate node.
The value C attofarads (also usually negative) is added to the sum of
the capacitances (to substrate) of nodes path1 and path2 to give the
capacitance of the aggregate node.
cap node1 node2 C
Defines a capacitor between the nodes node1 and node2, with
capacitance C. This construct is used to specify both
internodal capacitance within a single cell and between cells.
AUTHOR
Walter Scott
SEE ALSO
ext2sim(1), magic(1)