Hi, i want to use the Assura procfile to synthesize inductors in virtuoso passive component modeler but the procfile provided by the foundry includes layers which are not used for inductors. There is a BEOL resistor layer between the topmetal and 2nd to top metal, and it causes problems when I want to specify the bridge (crossover metal) of the inductor. The tool says the bridge layer must be the metal layer directly beneath the winding layer, so I can not select the 2nd to top metal as the bridge since there is a BEOL resistor layer above the 2nd to top metal. Is there some way to edit the procfile to ignore this layer and any other layers not used for inductors? The file does not seem to be in a readable format... Thanks

Hi Pancho,

Thanks for the reply.

Well I'm not necessarily trying to do the stacked spirals, we just want to get the tool working. The ability to optimize based on some given criteria has gotten the interest of myself and some others in my lab.

Anyways, our foundry has said specifically that they don't support VPCD but they mentioned that people have modified the procfile in the past to work with VPCD. The procfile, actually called _procfile, is in some RAW format which I can not understand. The fab is pretty strict about confidentiality so perhaps they did this by intent? I did a 'grep metal_variations *' on our RCX directory and it came up with nothing, which means the procfile must be in some other format. I will try procview when I get to campus today, I can not export my display to home  >:(.

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The process file is indeed encrypted, I can not open it with procview. Guess I am out of luck.

Thanks. I actually found that I can export the procfile to ascii format by choosing "Internal Format" in the procfile window (or techfile i don't remember) and saving it as a .tlib file, but it is missing information for some layers which I can fill in myself. it doesn't have the metal_variations and metal_combinations headers, but you mentioned they are not used in VPCM anyways.