As a scripting tool for the manipulation of electronic data, Netlisp can be used for a myriad of applications. The community of users determines the scope of applications to which Netlisp is put to use. We can assist you in developing your applications. We can also provide some more or less standard applications such as the following.
Netlisp can analyze existing design data and generate detailed reports. For instance, cell hierarchies can be generated along with the identification of all top-level cells. Enumeration of data layers, path and boundary elements, cell instantiations, etc.
This application generates the physical implementation of an integrated circuit's pad ring. The pads are placed and regular power rail inter-connections (stitching) are made automatically. Multiple and custom stitching patterns are supported on a single chip. The goal is to allow for rapid generation and modification of the pad ring as the size of the chip evolves.
Since Netlisp scripts can generate both the physical representation and schematic or logical views it is an effective tool for building and plugging arrays. The array builder is useful in cases where chip area is a premium and the size of the array can be minimized to meet the application requirements. In such cases, an array builder can generate a custom sized array on the fly. The array plugger is generally used for programming a ROM array. By using a scripting tool, the plugger is easily customized to support a variety of input and output formats.
One of the initial applications for Netlisp was the generation of 1x wafer-level masks used for burn-in of a wafer. Using a pair of character tables, sacrificial circuitry was wired up in the scribe grids and over the top of the chips. What was once a labor intensive and error prone process was greatly simplified by using a script based layout generator.