Patent ID: 8578303

Claim:
A method for compensating an effect of a patterning process, wherein the patterning process represents a lithography process or an etching process, and an iteration thereof comprises: providing a set of control points; defining a layout as an input to the patterning process, wherein the layout is represented by a set of boundaries, and the boundaries pass through the control points and enclose a set of regions with a plurality of constant values for the patterning process; providing a set of evaluation points; providing a set of target measurement values of the effect of the patterning process at the set of evaluation points; providing a set of actual measurement values of the effect of the patterning process with the layout at the set of evaluation points; computing a set of comparison values according to the target measurement values and the actual measurement values at the set of the evaluation points; moving the set of the control points to a set of updated locations with a plurality of directions and a plurality of amounts according to the set of the comparison values; and generating an updated layout as an updated input to the patterning process, wherein the updated layout is represented by a set of updated boundaries, and the updated boundaries pass through the set of control points with the set of updated locations.