Provided by: magic_8.3.105+ds.1-1.1_amd64 bug

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)