Patent ID: 7228522

Claim:
A method for calculating an edge-based proximity correction which is applied to a region in the proximity of an evaluation point, the method comprising: receiving a layout; decomposing polygons in the layout into edges; representing an edge as a difference between a first line-segment and a second line-segment which overlap at all points except for the points on the edge; computing the edge's contribution to the edge-based proximity correction using the first line-segment and the second line-segment; computing the edge-based proximity correction using the edge's contribution; receiving an interaction region around the evaluation point which identifies a region that contains edges that have non-negligible contributions to the edge-based proximity correction computation; selecting a set of visible edges within the interaction range which are visible from the evaluation point, wherein the edge-based proximity correction is computed using the set of visible edges, instead of all the edges within the interaction range; receiving an integrand which models an effect of a semiconductor manufacturing process for which the edge-proximity correction is being computed; generating a reference line-segment; computing a contribution value based on the integrand and the reference line-segment, wherein the contribution value represents the reference line-segment's contribution to the edge-proximity correction; and associating the reference line-segment with the contribution value, thereby allowing a subsequent execution of an edge-based proximity correction process to quickly lookup the reference line-segment's pre-computed contribution value.