This page summarizes the changes and fixes to each version of the Qckvu3/Care Area Wizard project.

Version 3.832 1/29/2014

This version outputs a statistics text file with groups listed in the order of percent coverage and number of blocks. The output file is the same as the specified GDSII output file but with a .txt extension.

The list of the groups generated as shown in the dialog is now better sorted according to the selected mode - name, blocks or coverage.

Version 3.83 12/12/2013

This version has a major overhaul for multithread processing.
When finding repeating blocks in the current view, the view is separated into multiple areas according to the number of cores in the machine. Multithread processing will then process each of the areas in parallel.
The number of processes might be adjusted to use less cores than in the system for better rows and columns distribution. e.g. 14 cores would do 4x3 or 3x4 instead of 7x2. The aspect ratio of the current view is also considered.
The size of each multithread area is also limited to be not too small, about 9 times the user specifed max block size, +- half the area size for even distribution along the rows and columns.
Grouping of blocks are done in a per area/thread basis. Groups in different areas/threads are not combined. Overlap margins between areas is 1.5 times the specified max block size.
Potential error report for each of the areas will show up in the RBF dialog at the end of the engine runs.
Environment variables $RBFROWS and $RBFCOLS can be used to control the multithreading.
Multithreading within each area is also applied when calculating geometries based don't care areas. This can be controlled by environment variable $RBFTHRNUM. Default is to use max system cores.
Environment variables should be set before running Qckvu3.

For multithread purpose, 1 RBF/CAW license works for multithread run of the engine.

References exactly on the edge of the extents of the inspection area or the extents of the extracted data (which could be smaller than the inspection area if some areas are empty) might be missing in the output. This has been fixed.

The find process cannot be started while the RBF blocks are drawing. Stop the draw in Qckvu3 before clicking find RBF.

Previous versions have the coverage percentage calculated based on the extracted data, not on the current view, which could be wrong if the extracted data is smaller than the current view. This has now been fixed.

These are the temporary files per thread for each run:
output file name_extract_thread num.gds
- original GDSII/OASIS data of the area for each thread extracted to GDSII output file name_groups_thread num.gds
- preliminary cell references grouping

output file name_eng_thread num.log
- engine run log file for each thread

output file name_eng_thread num.gds
- engine groups/blocks output in GDSII format for each thread

output file name_eng_thread num.txt
- engine groups/blocks output in text format for each thread

This temporary file is only created if import windows from GDSII is on:
import windows GDSII file name_rbfwin.txt

Version 3.83 10/31/2013

Previous versions are extremely slow when opening an OASIS file with lots of cells and cblocks (over a few hundred thousands of both). It would seem to hang during loading when the loading progress percentage goes up very slowly (a minute per 1%). This has been fixed.

Version 3.82 9/10/2013

Plugin can be developed to control Qckvu3 to open a file. Refer to qckplugin.h in the csv_plugin_sample directory.

"OASIS Error Memory Error: Adding data to load database failed."

This error would happen during loading when opening an OASIS file that has a table of CELLNAME records that are not contiguous.
When a "floating/new" CELLNAME record exists after the end of a cell, the cell would not be ended correctly with the layers in the cell.
This affects the database of that cell to expect no layer data. So when the loading phase tries to add data into this database, it thinks it's a memory error when the database was created with no storage.
This has now been fixed, non-contiguous table of CELLNAME records for non-strict mode is now working.

When clicking on a data for infoing, the data is not reported. It might be caused by info filtering being turned on. Now when infoing with filtering turned on, a yellow warning message shows up in the status bar as a reminder. Access the menu Info/Info Filter to see the settings.

Previous versions might crash when opening an empty file with no layer data depending on when plugins are installed. This has been fixed.

Data might be missing when zooming in/panning if the coordinates of the data is beyond +-1.07 billion um, depending on unit and grid. This has been fixed.
Though coordinate limits are still 32 bit (+-2.14 billion um, depending on unit and grid). Zooming to outside of +-2.14 would still yield a blank picture.

Under Xming Xserver on Windows, the Shift-Tab hot key to nagvigate to the previous info object would not work. This has been fixed.

Previous versions might not redraw a new picture when zooming in and out or it might crash with X error messages dumped onto the command prompt. This might happen only occasionally when a plugin is changing the states of Qckvu3. This has now been fixed.

Page up and down in the layer sidebar would skip 1 layer and show 1 layer too far (page down from layer 1 to 5 would show layer 7 to 11). This has been fixed.

Illegal characters in OASIS ASCII a-strings are now allowed and they do no cause an OASIS file open error anymore.

Previous version might highlight the extents box of the data when infoing the data. This would happen if the data has adjacent vertices very close to each other while the extents is relatively larger. e.g. a long path with many vertices. This has been fixed to highlight the actual data instead of the extents.

Added this new control in the Settings menu. When turned on, elements of any OASIS repetition which are inserted at the same point of another element in the same repetition are considered redundant and will be skipped during drawing and data processing.
Default is off. This setting is remembered between Qckvu3 runs.

Version 3.71 1/21/2012

A bug in the interpretation of some OASIS repetitions was fixed. This bug manifested itself during hierarchical extraction of candidate SRAM regions. This fix was made to QisLib itself at the core of Qckvu3, althoug the bug does not present itself in the representation of graphical data in Qckvu3 itself. This fix was important to any process using QisLib and hierarchical extraction.

The previous version of RPF by region (supplied in the form of a patch to v3.70) produced CAs where repeating and non-repeating data overlapped. This has been fixed.

new rules for sramfinder that allow for noisy positional data and for the injection of noise in data to be analyzed. These include the following:
sramid_rules.array_finder_jitter:TAB value
sramid_rules.randomize_input:TAB value
rpf_rules.array_finder_jitter:TAB value
rpf_rules.array_finder_jitter:TAB value

This can be defeated in the usual manner:
sramid_rules.array_finder_jitter:TAB IGNORE
sramid_rules.randomize_input:TAB IGNORE
rpf_rules.array_finder_jitter:TAB IGNORE
rpf_rules.array_finder_jitter:TAB IGNORE

The presence of a file sramfinder.dbg in the working directory will cause the sramfinder to output additional information.

An improvement in the Check scripts invoked at the startup of Qckvu3/CAW, and the production versions of sramfinder and RPF.

Version 3.70 11/30/2011

The qckvu3, sramfinder_prod, and rpf_finder_prod scripts have been enhanced to guard against bad computational environments. Specifically it makes sure that

This version reflects a significant improvement of the SRAMFINDER algorithm. Improvements include jitter control to address issue of noisy data. A bug that resulted in an endless loop was fixed.

Expert Mode now requires Transform View is turned OFF. The user is no longer permitted to generate a bitmap of the support layer if the user has activated the View/Transform View dialog. If this condition is detected the user will instructed to remedy this. This does not preclude the importing of CA files and creating scaled or transformed GDS outputs.

RPF errors during the conversion. Need the following changes: 1) Change GroupType to ‘CA’. 2) Change OverlapPriority to ‘GroupOverlapPriority’ 3) Change GroupOverlapPriority column to increment up. i.e. 1,2,3,4,...
The RPF output module was changed to fix this.

When using the production GUI (sramfinder_prod process) on the full die, the resulting CAF file has a problem with the top cell. The CAF cannot be displayed properly.
The new checking at startup described above corrects this condition. In addition, additional checks are made at run time.

Invoked SRAM finder with A284 gds. Care Area Wizard > Import Care area file. By default it showed 2 files ( ex: /home/dbbuser/caw_auto_2_Sram_sel.caf). Choose the specified file and qckvu3 got hung. sram.sh window shows "error: loaded file is not a valid GDSII file". If it is not a valid file, then it should not hang instead it can be notified with a reasonable error in qckvu3 itself.
The import flow was changed to check the validity of the propective CA file. Both a dialog and a text message in the users terminal window generate a warning. Qckvu3 does not hang.

Version 3.69 11/03/2011

Two buttons are now available for finding the bitmap in expert mode. Current View - only builds the bitmap for the current display in Qckvu3. Home View - builds the bitmap for the entire extents of the chip - however any data that crosses the display boundary is excluded.

This second option is more efficient since it does not attempt to rasterize any regions outside the extents of the chip.

jitter in SRAM arrays (i.e repeating structures whose pitch varies very slightly (typically in the range 1 nm) is causing the program to generate overlapping care are regions. This is not desired. The new control allows the user to specify a jitter filter value that should result in a single carea area where before we had multiple overlapping care areas.

Version 3.68b 10/27/2011

Added a debugging mode to the SRAM finder module to help investigate the "hang" problem with a small window of TF2. To be used for diagnosing the problem remotely.

Version 3.68a 10/26/2011

Improved logging with respect to the different phases of CA computation

-log_extras command line option added to sramfinder for additional logging for debugging purposes

post "union" of CAs is no longer automatically performed - this will require end user to perform "butting" merge at export

Symbols are not stripped to enable some additional insight into TV2 hang at GF

Sramfinder now assumes a mininum gap between members of a repeating group equal to 20% of max pitch.

Version 3.68 10/20/2011

Modified algorithms used to identify page breaks in memory arrays. This is an attempt to properly identify both wide and narrow breaks in DSW layout data.

Version 3.67 10/15/2011

Version Qckvu 3.65 CAW 1.30 8/12/2011

CAW production mode will pop up the A2D dialog where user can select the registration sites before clicking continue to launch the SRAM Finder process.
Notes:

Added menu to Qckvu3 to save the various settings currently set for Auto SRAM ID to a text file. This file can be used in CAW production mode. This file name is remembered between Qckvu3 runs.

In previous versions, redrawing or changing settings in Qckvu3 during find bitmap regions would generate incorrect bitmap results. Qckvu3 is now disabled during find bitmap regions.

In systems with backing store turned off, moving dialogs away from the Qckvu3 picture would cause an expose event to redraw it. If that happens during extraction or find bitmap regions, older versions would cause CAW to redraw it's highlights and selections.
The drawing area is now disabled during the 2 long processes, the picture is not refreshed during these 2 long processes.

The Cell Name and Single Reference Highlight Rules controls in the Highlight dialog are all removed. Just the Auto SRAM ID and Multi Cell Names Rule controls remain.

If registration sites are selected before running Auto SRAM ID, the sites are gone after SRAM ID. This has been fixed.

This version of CAW under batch mode in the finding step will now wait until Qckvu3 exits to release system memory before auto starting.

Version Qckvu CAW 3.64 7/20/11

Added control to ignore all texts in the GDSII or OASIS file. Set this in the Open Filters dialog before opening the file. Default is ignore texts off. This setting is remembered between Qckvu3 runs.

A new "Remember Layer & Cell Filters" control is added to the Open Filters dialog to remember the "Layers To Open" and "Cells To Ignore" settings between Qckvu3 runs.
If remembered, users can just run Qckvu3 and open a GDSII or OASIS file and the remembered layers and cells to be opened would be used automatically.
Default is to not remember the layer and cell filters. Clicking Reset All To Default Settings will turn off this remember control.
Note that if certain layers/cells to be opened are remembered, users might not be aware of it when opening a file in the next Qckvu3 run and missing data might be the unwanted behavior.

Multiple windows extraction can have a 7 times speed up when a large number of extraction windows is specified.

When finding cell references, previous versions might skip some data resulting in incomplete results, or it might access some data unnecessarily resulting in slow searching.
These 2 issues have now been fixed and the search speed could be many times faster.

Starting in Qckvu3 v3.51 (5/5/2010), infoing OASIS would crash when there are display filtered areas being info-ed.
Since single click in the default zoom window mode is also infoing, users might be confused that the zooming is actually crashing.

Previous versions would report the measured distance off by 1 if the distance is negative and the GDSII file has a grid of 1.0. This has been fixed.

Previous versions would draw incorrect data with running lines when zooming in tight to non manhattan data with large extents. This has been fixed.

When opening a GDSII file after a cache file is opened, it might crash at the beginning of loading (when the first text is added to the database during loading).
The crash would only happen if the 2nd GDSII file has more text than the 1st GDSII cache file; AND that the cache file was generated after a GDSII file was opened which has more text than the GDSII file that the cache was generated from.
This has been fixed with no memory maps cache files backward compatibility issue.

When opening an OASIS, this error might occur if the OASIS file has CBLOCKS which uncompresses to more than 2MB. It has now been fixed.

Starting in v3.40 (2/3/2010), OASIS cell placements with magnification or angle would be missing or wrong in the drawing and get vector data result when load to memory is turned off. This has been fixed.

Version Qckvu 3.591 11/24/10

Fixed a problem that prevented the SRAM_ID from creating output from a very small region (due to synchronization issues between modules ...)

Improved the recognition algorithm for repeated patterns.

Corrected a problem in which SRAM blocks created using AREF's were not properly identified.

Version Qckvu 3.59 11/12/10

The SRAM ID module is now a complete flow. The first steps (loading the file, rastesrizing the sram support layer and entering the rule files are interactive - the extraction of care areas can be done interactively or a batch/script file can be generated.

Version Qckvu 3.58 10/15/10

Includes a new module called SRAM_ID that rasterizes the SRAM support layer and then uses the regions generated by that to analyze a SRAM block. Two modes of extracing the proper SRAM Care Areas: a cell placement mode based on repetition of cells and a geometry mode based on actual geometry (in the poly layer)

Version Qckvu 3.52 5/18/10

Qckvu3 drawing can be stopped by hitting the ESC keyboard button, clicking the Stop button on the toolbar, clicking Stop on the View menu, or right mouse click with the mouse inside the drawing area.
Now these controls will also stop the drawing of the care areas.
In addition, during highlighting, clicking Stop in the CAW Highlight dialog will stop both the redraw and the highlight process. Click Stop in Qckvu3 toolbar (or Esc or right mouse click) will stop the redraw of the GDSII or OASIS data and the care areas without stopping the highlight process.

Click Stop in Qckvu3 toolbar (or Esc or right mouse click) will stop the redraw of the GDSII or OASIS data first; then the care areas will continue to be drawn; click stop again will stop the redraw of the care areas. This way, there is a control for the users to see the care areas without waiting for the GDSII or OASIS data to be fully drawn.

As a result of allowing redraw interruption, various functions that change the care area database are disabled during a redraw. The redraw should first be stopped before these function controls are re-enabled. These include highlight, clear highlight, delete and move selections/rules, merge compute and export changes and registration sites changes.

During highlight, the number of care areas collected so far and the elasped time are now reported on the status bar on the bottom of the Highlight dialog.
During merge computation and export, a progress dialog box would pop up showing percentage progress on a per selection and strip basis, various operations like convexing and unionizing are also reported. Cancellation is possible in between operations.

If a merge has been computed, clicking merge again or export does not recompute a merge if no settings have been changed.

X server backing store should be optimally turned on to minimize number of redraws.

In addition, various redraws have been cleaned up:
1. When highlighting new rule(s), now it doesn't do a redraw if there are no previous highlights to clear.
2. Popping up the Export Dialog or closing it without doing anything now don't cause a redraw.
3. Cancelling from the Registration Sites Dialog now doesn't cause a redraw.
4. When getting multiple expose events, multiple care area redraws automatically interrupts the previous ones.

The information in the Export Dialog might not be updated when rules or selections are added, deleted or moved. This has been fixed.

Missing plugin and info drawing data if a redraw is initiated while redrawing plugin data. This has been fixed.

OASIS zoom pan and data processing has now been further optimized to be 3X faster than previous versions depending on the data. For a GDSII corresponding OASIS file, the OASIS zoom pan and data processing speed is now almost the same as GDSII or 1.5X slower than GDSII (it was 5X slower than GDSII in previous versions).

When Load To Memory is turned on for OASIS, previous versions of Qckvu3 do not yield any zoom pan and data processing speed up, and they use just a little more memory.
This version now puts the whole OASIS file in memory and thus all zoom pan and data processing are getting data directly from memory for faster operations. Memory usage is exactly the size of the OASIS file more than when "Load To Memory" is turned off.

Version Qckvu 3.50 4/17/10

Qckvu3 now supports selective open of certain layers and cells of a GDSII or OASIS file. Go to File/GDSII/OASIS Open Filters and access these filters before opening the file.
Use these filters to open larger files to reduce both memory usage and various processing times.
The layer and cell filters are not remembered between Qckvu3 runs, Qckvu3 defaults to open all layers and all cells.
Qckvu3 defaults to open all layers and all cells.
Open Filters are not used when opening GDSII Cache Files.
Click on Reset to set all filters back to the default settings.

Added ignore layers in addition to open layers. The specified layers will be ignored while all other layers in the file would be opened.

New Ignore References To Empty Cells control where empty references would be ignored or not during the open loading phase.
Ignoring empty references would use less memory.
Ignored empty cells and references to empty cells are still included in the file report and the cell dialog. They are just not added to the database for drawing, infoing and data traversing.
Default is ignore references to empty cells.

Load File To Memory and Items Per Quad are now moved from the Preference dialog to the Open Filters dialog. They are both settings which should be set before a file is opened.

"Load File To Memory", "Items Per Quad" and "Ignore References To Empty Cells" are remembered between Qckvu3 runs.
The list of open/ignore layers, ignore cell names and ignore regular expressions are also remembered. But the layers and cells filters are always default to be turned off (to prevent undesired data dropped).
To reuse the previous layer and cell filters setting, simply turn them back on and the list of layer numbers, cell names and regular expressions would be reused without reentering them.

Added a new function to quickly reopen a GDSII file using cache files. After a GDSII file is opened, users can create GDSII cache files which can then be reopened very quickly. e.g. A 32GB GDSII file opens in 12 mins, while it's corresponding cache files can be opened in 10 seconds.
To create cache files, open the GDSII file with "Load To Memory" turned on. Access "Load To Memory" from the Select GDSII dialog box or the Preference dialog box.
Once the GDSII file is opened, go to Create GDSII Cache Files and specify the directory folder where the cache files should be generated. Specify a new directory in an existing directory and it will be created.
The names of the 2 cache files are fixed to be GDSIIFileName.scan.b64 and GDSIIFileName.dbload.b64. (where b64 specifies big endian 64 bit for SunOS, l64 for X86/Linux 64 bit, b32 for SunOS 32 bit and l32 for X86/Linux 32 bit).
Once the cache files are created in the specified directory folder, they can be reopened. To open a pair of cache files (.scan and .dbload), go to Select GDSII Cache and select the .dbload file. It will automatically finds the corresponding .scan file.
Users don't need the original GDSII file to open the cache files, unless of course the GDSII file has been changed and new cache files should then be regenerated.
When opening cache files, Load File To Memory on/off can still be used to use more or less memory for faster or slower zoom and pan.
Users cannot create cache files when a cache file is opened, it means nothing.
These cache files are not cross platform compatible.
This cache file function is only available for GDSII, not OASIS or OpenAccess.
If used with GDSII Open Filters, the cache files only contains the data layer data, cells and references opened. And the filters won't be used when reopening the cache files.
A separately licensed new program, QckCache, is included in this Qckvu3 release which can be used to create cache files for GDSII file. A batch running QckCache on GDSII file(s) can be set up to create cache files for fast reopen.

Added an Info Point Mode where users can just click a point and Qckvu3 will find info data within +/- 6 pixels thresold of the point click area.
The old Info Window Mode is still available where users click 2 points to define the window area to search for info data.
With the new Info Point Mode, i and ? are now shortcuts for Info Point; q (query) is for Info Window Mode.
(This Info Point Mode actually works exactly the same as Zoom Window Mode where users can actually click on a point and it would do infoing.)

Finding OASIS array references in CAW is now faster with the same optimization developed for GDSII in v3.41.

Added a new control to turn on just text insertion markers. The old reference markers control now turns on/off cell reference markers only. Note that text markers are only drawn if both draw text mode and text markers are turned on.

Keyboard shortcut - x.

i or ? - Info Point
q - Info Window Mode
x - Text Markers on/off

Added a warning when users open a GDSII file bigger than 8GB or an OASIS file bigger than 2GB and "Load To Memory" is turned off. This warning will tell users that they cannot create cache files or do editing since "Load To Memory" is turned off and ask if they want to continue the open.

Extract would generate polygons duplicated at the same location 5 times. This has been fixed.

Version Qckvu 3.42 03/17/10 CA Wizard 1.19

Qckvu3 now supports selective open of certain layers and cells of a GDSII or OASIS file. Go to File/GDSII/OASIS Open Filters and access these filters before opening the file.
Use these filters to open larger files to reduce both memory usage and various processing times.
The layer and cell filters are not remembered between Qckvu3 runs, Qckvu3 defaults to open all layers and all cells.
Click on Reset to set all filters back to the default settings.
Open Filters are not used when opening GDSII Cache Files.
Note:
Cell filter is available to GDSII only in this release. It will be supported for OASIS in a future release. Some other filters will be added in a future release.

Added a new function to quickly reopen a GDSII file using cache files. After a GDSII file is opened, users can create GDSII cache files which can then be reopened very quickly. e.g. A 32GB GDSII file opens in 12 mins, while it's corresponding cache files can be opened in 10 seconds.
To create cache files, open the GDSII file with "Load To Memory" turned on. Access "Load To Memory" from the Select GDSII dialog box or the Preference dialog box.
Once the GDSII file is opened, go to Create GDSII Cache Files and specify the directory folder where the cache files should be generated. Specify a new directory in an existing directory and it will be created.
The names of the 2 cache files are fixed to be GDSIIFileName.scan.b64 and GDSIIFileName.dbload.b64. (where b64 specifies big endian 64 bit for SunOS, l64 for X86/Linux 64 bit, b32 for SunOS 32 bit and l32 for X86/Linux 32 bit).
Once the cache files are created in the specified directory folder, they can be reopened. To open a pair of cache files (.scan and .dbload), go to Select GDSII Cache and select the .dbload file. It will automatically finds the corresponding .scan file.
Users don't need the original GDSII file to open the cache files, unless of course the GDSII file has been changed and new cache files should then be regenerated.
Users cannot create cache files when a cache file is opened, it means nothing.
These cache files are not cross platform compatible.
This cache file function is only available for GDSII, not OASIS or OpenAccess.
If used with GDSII Open Filters, the cache files only contains the data layer data, cells and references opened. And the filters won't be used when reopening the cache files.

Added a warning when users open a GDSII file bigger than 8GB or an OASIS file bigger than 2GB and "Load To Memory" is turned off. This warning will tell users that they cannot create cache files or do editing since "Load To Memory" is turned off and ask if they want to continue the open.

Extract would generate polygons duplicated at the same location 5 times. This has been fixed.

Version Qckvu 3.41 02/27/10 CA Wizard 1.19

New Array reference filtering was added.
On our sample 32GB GDSII file, the open time is 12 mins using 14GB with load memory on.
Finding all array references takes 5 mins. Subsequent finds with different settings are INSTANT.
Highlighting some of these cells takes 2 to 8 mins, depending on the cell.

Qckvu 3.40 can directly open GDSII files that have been compressed with gzip. Qckvu does not unzip these to a temporary folder -- it directly reads the data. This allows users to keep their repository of GDSII files in gzip format and still access them quickly and efficiently.

Version Qckvu 3.40 02/11/10 CA Wizard 1.18

If compute merge failed with an error box, the previous merged care areas would remain. This has been fixed to clear the previous merged areas which don't represent the new failed compute merge.

Qckvu 3.40 can directly open GDSII files that have been compressed with gzip. Qckvu does not unzip these to a temporary folder -- it directly reads the data. This allows users to keep their repository of GDSII files in gzip format and still access them quickly and efficiently.

Version Qckvu 3.32 09/30/09 CA Wizard 1.17

Under trivial cases when the initial CA count is low, the merged output might not be optimized as expected. This has been fixed.

Previously if the max CA count is set higher than the initial CA count, unnecessary compute iteration might be performed. This has been fixed.

Version Qckvu 3.31 09/12/09 CA Wizard 1.16

New rectangle/window ROI draw mode allows users to pick any point/grid point/find object/45 degrees point. Moreover, users can zoom to different location in between the 2 points of the rectangle window.

Previous versions would draw single reference rule highlight in some weird color on top of the flashing info object if pick mode is used. This has been fixed.

When doing info pick object, windowing an area is now the only control, point click to info pick object is not available anymore in CAW. (General point click info (zoom window mode) is still available in Qckvu3 as a general info function.)

Drawing outline and label for different references can now be controlled by whether they are single or array references or both. Further filtering can be done using the minimum array dimension or minimum size (size is for both single and array references).

Info detail information in the bottom text area scrolls to the right when it's longer than the text area width. This has been fixed to always show the beginning of the info text.

In v3.30, when redrawing at home view using middle click, the new home view isn't remembered; zoom home after that will draw the old home picture. This has been fixed.

Ending an object draw (point, line, rectangle, polygon) now clears the flashing info object if snap object mode was on for the last vertex of the object. This also serves as an acknowledgement to the user that the object is "ended/accepted".
A message on the bottom status text of Qckvu3 is also shown in yellow reminding the user to right click to pop up the menu to accept the object vertex and end the point, line or rectangle. This message is not shown for polygon where a rubber band is a better reminder.

Version Qckvu 3.20 06/04/09 CA Wizard 1.15

This Edit ROI function allows the user to open any cell and to define regions of interest (ROI) inside of the cell. When the cell is highlighted and added to a selection set, the care areas are defined by these regions of interest and not by the entire cell extents. Added per request of IBM.

Previous versions would use the X gap value as the Y gap. This has been fixed.

For rules with care areas highlighted with home view specified, the window for that rule as shown in the Selections dialog was incorrectly shown as the extents of the highlight cell. This has been fixed to show the extents of the current viewing cell.

Previous versions might print out Motif warnings in the console when selecting different kind of highlight rule in the highlight dialog. This has been fixed.

When single reference rule is selected, previous versions might allow user to click on the highlight button even if no single reference is picked. That would cause a memory error message to pop up. This has been fixed, the highlight button won't be enabled until a single reference is picked.

Version Qckvu 3.19 04/28/09 CA Wizard 1.14

Both the Compute Count feature and the Merging Feature have been made multi-threaded to a maximum of 4 simultaneous threads. Together with an improvement in the merging algorithms we have measured improvements of up to 6X on a 4 processor workstation. (However not that the improvement varies based on the database and if I/O limited then no improvement is seen)

A compute count progress bar has been added which indicates the progress in computing the care area count and if so desired, a user can cancel this operation.

Highlight dialog, Selections dialog, Registration Marks dialog, Open Job, Save Job and Import Care Area File are all disabled during Compute Count.

When performing a multi cell highlight, the count per cell is now listed in a drop down list box. The total of all areas for all cells is also shown in the list.

The Help File for CA Wizard was updated.

Version Qckvu 3.18 03/01/09 CA Wizard 1.13

The Compute Count and Export functions have been optimized. Up to a 6X speed up has been achieved depending on the number of care areas and their spatial distribution.

When using the Max CA Count mode to compute care areas, different percentages of area coverage is being used to compute the nearest CA count to the specified value. If it fails to find a percentage which generates a count within 5% of the specified count, it used to just report "Compute Count Error".

Now it reports detail information about the nearest count computed, the area coverage percentage of that count, the specified count, and that the computed count is not within 5% of the specified count.

This computed result is still a valid result albeit not optimal relative to the specified Max CA Count.

If Current Window is turned on in the Export dialog, the reported total number of care areas is an estimate of what the total would be in the home view. This total is projected based on the computation of the care areas in the current window only.

The label switches between "Total" to "Projected Total" when Current Window is turned on/off.

Previous versions of the merge rule would generate care areas which are fully embedded inside another care area. These redundant care areas have been removed in the latest algorithm.

Selecting multiple cell names for highlighting is now cumulative from selecting cells both in the hierarchy tree and the wildcard dialog.

To remove cells from the selected list, select the cells and click Remove. Click Remove All to remove all cells in the selected list.

Info of the selected cell is displayed in the lower left panel. If multiple cells are selected, the info panel doesn't get updated and the previous info is preserved.

The number of care areas found after each cell is now shown. This gives you a sense of process in addition to displaying the care areas when the process of highlighting many cells is taking a longer time.

The total number for all cells is still shown after highlighting all cells.

Clicking on the Hide Selections and Selections... buttons when no file is opened would crash Qckvu3. This has been fixed. Highlight dialog is greyed out when no file is opened.

Closing the Highlight dialog will now automatically stop the highlight process if it's taking a long time. It works just like clicking the stop button then close.

It used to continue to highlight with Qckvu3 all disabled and thus users wouldn't be able to access the Highlight dialog again.

Updated help documentation in html format accessible via each of the dialog help buttons and the Care Area Wizard pull down menu in Qckvu3.

Access the CAW help contents index from the Care Area Wizard pull down menu/Help.

Access the CAW home page on www.artwork.com from the Care Area Wizard pull down menu/Help.

This version improves by a factor of 5X to 10X the cell highlighting for files input as OASIS.

Version Qckvu 3.15 02/04/09 CAW 1.10

Adding a non-commited rule to an existing selection is disallowed

Moving/Deleting/Setting Show of non-commited rules is disallowed

Moving a rule to a new selection is now functionally the same as adding a highlighted rule to a new selection.

The Merge XY Gap uses both the X/Y value now

The final count of selections that will not be exported is "0" and will not contribute to the total final count. Previous versions included the count of selections that were not exported.

Import/Export GDSII File has ben changed to Import/Export Care Area File and the default suffix for a GDSII file containing Care Areas is now .caf

Fixed the scrolling bug where the checkbox for Delete/Move does not move with the scroll

Version Qckvu 3.14 01/20/09 CA Wizard 1.09

Three New buttons have been added to the Selections dialog: Next/Previous Selection, Move to a New Selection, Rename Selection.

Added the ability to save the export options/settings and to compute the number of care areas (based on these settings) but not to actually export. This allows the user to view the effect of his settings and change them without generating unwanted exports.

Added two new fields showing the intial CAW count and the final CAW count. Again, this is designed to help the user determine the effect of various sizing settings on the CA count.

Saves the export settings without computing the new count or exporting. (similar to number 1 but does not even do a count which might be time consuming in some situations.)

Version Qckvu 3.13 12/23/08 CA Wizard 1.09 01/20/09

Added two new buttons to select the previous or next selection

Added a new functionality to move to a new selection

Added a new button to rename a selection

Added the ability to save the export options and compute the expected final number of care areas without actually exporting. This enables the user to go back and adjust minimum siziing or merging parameters to control the total number of care area rectangles generated.

Adds two new fields to show the Initial and Final Care Area Count

The merge options are now laid out in the dialog. If merge by XY Gap option is selected, the larger of the two values is used -- we plan to develop a new algorithm to allow a different value for XY and release in the near furure.

The layer and data type fields are now combined into one in order to keep the dialog from getting to large.

The imported selections are now automatically drawn -- prior to this version one had to press the redraw button to see them.

Version Qckvu 3.13 12/23/08 CA Wizard 1.08 12/24/08

A new function allows the import of an externally generated GDSII file which is converted into a job file and then read into CA Wizard.

A new function now checks for minimum sized CA areas. If a stand alone CA area is less than the minimum size it is resized to the minimum. If CAs are generated by merging/slicing, and one of the resulting rectangles is smaller than the min size, the entire set of slices is is replaced with a rectangle equal to the extents of the set of slices.

Previous versions of the software would halt (or crash) when reading an OASIS file that had a text string including a new line character. (Technically, this is forbidden by the OASIS spec). This version now reads such data correctly and also supports the CR character.

previous versions were ignoring GDSII record type - BOX. This version now reads them and treats them the same as a boundary.

Version Qckvu 3.11 11/21/08 CA Wizard 1.07 12/04/08

The output of the config.csv file has been corrected to match the sample provided by KLA-Tencor:

Clip1,site1.tif
Clip2,site2.tif
Orientation,RIGHT
DataType-RegistrationSite1,22
LayerId-RegistrationSite1,11
DataType-RegistrationSite2,44
LayerId-RegistrationSite2,33 

The Tiff output for each of the registration sites is now limited to a maximum of 256 pixels and it is always a square format with the highlighted polygon vertex at the center and fitting within the square bounding box. Default pixel size is 256.

Previous versions of CA Wizard might not save the positions of dialog boxes causing them later to shift outside the screen area. This has been fixed.

Qckvu 3.11 Enhancements

This version includes some html based help manual incorporated into the help pull down menu and Help buttons in various dialogs. It launches the system browser for opening html files.

This version has a new Extract GDSII plugin that enables a user to select a polygonal shaped region to extract instead of a simple rectangular region. The user can also specify whether the program should clip any entities which cross the region boundary or extract the entire entity.

Version Qckvu 3.10 11/21/08 CA Wizard 1.06 11/21/08

Previous versions might crash under rare occasions when a tooltip popped up. This has been fixed.

Previous versions did not check for or report errors such as memory error when care areas failed to add to a selection. These errors are now detected and reported in message boxes.

This version produces a black and white (or white on black) Tiff output for each of the two registration sites. The Tiff file will contain whatever data is displayed (i.e. layers must be turned on) at the time the registration site is defined.

Changes to Qckvu3 that affect CA Wizard

A new control has been added to the toolbar that enables the user to set the "size" of the info object gray highlight. The range is from 1 to 20 pixels which will be the width of the outline of the info object. This has been added because the previous default of 1 pixel often was difficult to see.

After an object is highlighted in Info mode, the highlight blinks. Pressing the space bar (or clicking on "Walk Around Object") to jump to the next vertex stops the blinking.

This "stop blinking" also works for info on cell references and texts even though there are no vertices to walk around.

Version Qckvu 3.09 11/13/08 CA Wizard 1.05 11/13/08

The CA Wizard Plug In now has its own license and will not function unless a separate CA Wizard license is available.

A user can now save the state of a project (or job) before exiting and then resume work later. The information needed is saved in a job file and it stores selection rules, cached care areas and all other CA Wizard parameters in an ascii job file. When a user closes the CA Wizard he will be prompted to save the state to a job file.

When a single reference selection has been made, the selected placement's parent and grandparent are now displayed in a list box in bottom up order. The user can click on a parent or grandparent to highlight and track the parent and specify it as the selected reference.

The list of parents in the cell name rule is now sorted alphabetically.

The function that merges Care Areas is not implemented on a selection by selection basis. If a user wants all selections to be merged with the same values then this can be done also.

This version now enables the user to specify a different gap for X and for Y spacing when merging Care Areas.

The nesting levels display control in the cell reference dialog in Qckvu3 now has a list box of nesting levels 0 to 20. User can select multiple levels to draw cell references boxes and labels.

The "Load File To Memory" setting in the "Select GDSII" and "Select OASIS" dialogs is now remembered from session to session. Load On or Off status is displayed in the text area when opening a file.

Previous versions might crash under rare occasions when a tooltip popped up. This has been fixed.

Version Qckvu 3.07 10/15/08 CA Wizard 1.03 10/22/08

NEW FUNCTIONS

The config.csv and mapping.csv files are now generated when care area GDSII is exported. No GIF files are exported yet for the registration sites.

Region, Group, Code and Type are now implemented.

Y gap == X gap for now; Separate Y gap area merge control will be added later.

The registration sites dialog can be accessed from the Tools/Registration Sites menu. Picking a boundary or path from the GDSII or OASIS data and a registration site bounding box is calculated. Together with the user's specified layer and datatype, a boundary is output to the export GDSII file. The GIF snapshots are not yet implemented.

Rules can now be deleted from a selection or moved to a different existing selection.

FIXES and ENHANCEMENTS

The position of these two dialogs windows are now remembered.

The wildcard dialog has DOS mode as default and the last mode used is remembered. It also has auto search as you type, no more clicking on a search button.

Previous versions might hang or crash with X Windows error after picking an object when cell outline or label at level 0 (top cell) is turned on. This has been fixed.

Plug in info mode now also works when walking around the vertices of a boundary or path.

Version Qckvu 3.06 10/15/08 CA Wizard 1.02 10/15/08

Added the array control/filter to draw array reference extents as outline, extents outline for the single references on the outer row and column, or extents outline for all single references of the array. By Default array processing = full.

Use can now click on the Pick button next to the cell name text box to pick cell name using mouse info to identify references. The name of the reference queried will then be shown in the cell name text box.

New highlight size control. Single pixel outline for highlighting was very difficult to discern in earlier versions. Bigger highlights are drawn in outline and the outline width in pixels is controllable. Smaller highlights are drawn in a minimum sized filled rectangles where the size in pixels is controllable. The highlight size slider controls both outline and fill sizes.

• Level 1 is true to the original data with outlines drawn in 1 pixel and small references drawn at original size.
• Level 2 draws outline in 2 pixels, and small references in 4 pixels.
• Level 3 draws outline in 3 pixels, and small references in 6 pixels.
• Level 4 draws outline in 4 pixels, and small references in 8 pixels.
• Level 5 draws outline in 5 pixels, and small references in 10 pixels.
• Max is level 10.
• Default highlight size level is 3.

This slider also controls the size of the areas to be drawn after the highlights are added to a selection.

The selected cell's width and height are shown in the "Last Highlighted Cell" info panel. When the cell is highlighted, the highlights count is shown.

Default values for parents, nesting, array, window mode, highlight size are located in $HOME/.artwork/cawizard.Xdefaults

When single reference rule is turned on, it automatically turns on pick mode. Use the mouse to info data and references will be auto highlighted. Click pick again to enter pick mode (if the mode has been changed to other zoom/info mode like zoom window.)Array reference in single reference rule is always drawn as array extents outline.

Selection dialog now shows if a rule is a single reference rule or not. For single ref rule, there are no parents, nesting, array and window filter settings displayed; these fields remain empty.

In the selection dialog, the top cell information is taken out since all rules of all selections belong to the same top cell.

An export button is added to go to the next step of exporting selections to files.

Selections can be exported using the specified layer, datatype and cell name.

Exports are output to a directory which is selected when "Export..." is clicked. For now, it generates the specified GDSII output file, mappings.csv and config.csv (the 2 csv contain no meaningful information for this release).

Boolean operation is fully functional with grow, unionize and shrink. Only one gap parameter is available - i.e. Xgap = Ygap

Registration Marks is not yet functional.

Version Qckvu 3.05 10/07/08 CA Wizard 1.01 10/07/08

The Wildcard dialog to find cell name to select as the highlighted cell has been added.

Multiple nesting levels control has been added allow the user to filter the selected cell by its location in the hierarchy. To view cell at all hierarcy levels turn off the filter.

The control for highlighting data by window has been implemented. There are three options: Highlight only cells that fall inside of the current display window; highlight cells for the complete extents, or highlight cells in a user defined window.

Highlight color can now be controlled.

Extents of a cell selected in the hierarchy tree is now displayed.

The number of cells highlighted is now reported after the highlight is completed.

The Clear highlight button/function is now implemented.

1. Selection color control.
2. Rule nesting level(s) are shown.
3. Rule window coordinates are shown.

Both the Highlight and Selections dialog window positions are remembered.

The highlight color and new selection color are remembered.

These settings are stored in a text file in the the user's home directory: $HOME/.artwork/cawizard.Xdefaults

Load File To Memory has been implemented. If there is enough RAM to hold both the quad tree (generated by QIS) and the input data in memory, then using the Load File to Memory control will result in much faster highlighting of cells and highlighting of selection sets. Unfortunately it is not possible to know exactly the size of the quad tree and amount of RAM the input data will require. More work will be done on possible ways of predicting this.

Version 3.04 09/30/08 CA Wizard 1.00 09/30/08

This is the first beta release of CA Wizard for internal KLA-Tencor testing. It has only a minimal feature set as most work until this time has been on the underlining data engines.

1. To speed up the highlighting, the environment variable, $QIS_LOAD_TO_MEM=on, should be set. This loads the gdsii data into memory (as opposed to leaving it on disk) and allows the program to pull data from memory rather than disk.

2. Cell Extent Highlights display in yellow, selections are displayed in red. This will be modified in future releases to give the user full control over highlight colors.

3. Highlights and selections are computed for the current viewing window. Zoom or pan and the user must click on highlight button again to display the highlights in the new window. This will be fixed so that such operation is automatic.

4. Changing the open cell in the cell dialog does not refresh the CA Wizard dialog. Close the CA Wizard and reopen it. This will be fixed in the future release.

5. Highlight rule and selections remain after opening another GDS file. Not sure what should be the expected behavior. [should be purged - stevedb]

6. If the system does not have backing store turned on, uncovering the Qckvu3 drawing area might produce an incorrect left over picture in Qckvu3. Turn on backing store (in your Windows Xserver or VNC on the Windows side) to avoid this problem. Not sure how to fix this issue easily, it is related to plugin.

7. Performance on large databases leaves something to be desired. More work needs to be done, especially when highlighting cells for a full chip view.