In three-dimensional integrated circuits, the interconnection design among chiplets on redistribution layers (RDLs) is crucial for achieving high-performance computing systems. To optimize the inter-chip connections, most of the previous works focused on automatic signal net routing and pin assignment. The power/ground plane generation, is still a manual and time-consuming task, especially when generating the power planes of more than ten power supplies on a limited number of RDLs. This paper proposes a novel Voronoi diagram-based multiple power/ground plane generation methodology that simultaneously optimizes the power/ground planes of all power/ground nets by utilizing the white space of given RDLs, while considering the signal routing blockages, power integrity, and complex design rules. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can achieve not only optimal area utilization but also the best cross-layer power integrity in terms of the total number of redundant vias.

BACKGROUND: Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a neuromuscular disorder that affects ambulatory function. Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) imaging, utilizing envelope statistics, has proven effective in diagnosing DMD. Radiomics enables the extraction of detailed features from QUS images. This study further proposes a hybrid QUS radiomics and explores its value in characterizing DMD. METHODS: Patients (n = 85) underwent ultrasound examinations of gastrocnemius through Nakagami, homodyned K (HK), and information entropy imaging. The hybrid QUS radiomics extracted, selected, and integrated the retained features derived from each QUS image for classification of ambulatory function using support vector machine. Nested five fold cross-validation of the data was conducted, with the rotational process repeated 50 times. The performance was assessed by averaging the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC). RESULTS: Radiomics enhanced the average AUROC of B-scan, Nakagami, HK, and entropy imaging to 0.790, 0.911, 0.869, and 0.890, respectively. By contrast, the hybrid QUS radiomics using HK and entropy images for diagnosing ambulatory function in DMD patients achieved a superior average AUROC of 0.971 (p < 0.001 compared with conventional radiomics analysis). CONCLUSIONS: The proposed hybrid QUS radiomics incorporates microstructure-related backscattering information from various envelope statistics models to effectively enhance the performance of DMD assessment.

In this paper, an automatic lithography hotspot fix guidance generation method based on optical simulation engine and a fix flow utilizing this method are proposed. We find that subject to shape changes of original layout, there is strong correlation between the optical intensity maps of pre-OPC and post-OPC layouts. From this fact, we develop a fix action generation method by optimizing optical intensity in terms of polygon changes near a litho hotspot in a pre-OPC layout. Fix guidances as a subset of fix actions of a hotspot can be selected by a greedy method. The fix guidances are used as input to router to fix the hotspots. We integrate this fix guidance generation method with commercial lithography hotspot detection tool to create a post-route lithography hotspot fixing flow and test with industry 65nm designs. Compared with commercial flow, our method has 1.4X~1.9X fix rate with similar run time. The circuit timing impact is negligible in both our flow and industry flow. And our flow will not introduce any new design rule check (DRC) violation.

In this paper, Huffman-code based reversible variable length code (RVLC) construction algorithms are studied. We use graph models to represent the prefix, suffix and Hamming distance relationships among RVLC candidate codewords. The properties of the so-obtained graphs are investigated in detail, based on which we present two efficient RVLC construction algorithms: algorithm 1 aims at minimizing the average codeword length while algorithm 2 jointly minimizes the average codeword length and maximizes the error detection probability at the same time.

In this paper, Huffman-code-based reversible variable length code (RVLC) construction algorithms are studied. We use graph models to represent the prefix, suffix, and Hamming distance relationships among RVLC candidate code words. The properties of the so-obtained graphs are investigated in detail, based on which we present two efficient RVLC construction algorithms: Algorithm 1 aims at minimizing the average code word length while Algorithm 2 jointly minimizes the average code word length and maximizes the error-detection probability at the same time.

Reversible variable-length codes (RVLCs) are not only prefix-free but also suffix-free codes. Due to the additional suffix-free condition, RVLCs are usually nonexhaustive codes. When a bit error occurs in a sentence from a nonexhaustive RVLC, it is possible that the corrupted sentence is not decodable. The error is said to be detected in this case. We present a model for analyzing the error detection and error synchronization characteristics of nonexhaustive VLCs. Six indices, the error detection probability, the mean and the variance of forward error detection delay length, the error synchronization probability, the mean and the variance of forward error synchronization delay length are formulated based on this model. When applying the proposed model to the case of nonexhaustive RVLCs, these formulations can be further simplified. Since RVLCs can be decoded in backward direction, the mean and the variance of backward error detection delay length, the mean and the variance of backward error synchronization delay length are also introduced as measures to examine the error detection and error synchronization characteristics of RVLCs. In addition, we found that error synchronization probabilities of RVLCs with minimum block distance greater than 1 are 0.