Patent ID: 8661393

Claim:
An integrated circuit design method, comprising: accessing a standard cell library including a plurality of standard cells, wherein a standard cell comprises a data structure indicative of a layout of a plurality of physical elements defining the standard cell; determining, from the standard cell library, a first boundary library including a first boundary structure corresponding to each of the plurality of standard cells, wherein the first boundary structure indicates a layout of a first boundary region of the corresponding standard cell; responsive to identifying multiple first boundary structures in the first boundary library sharing a common layout, merging, by a data processing system, the multiple first boundary structures into a common boundary structure to produce a reduced first boundary library; checking, by the data processing system, local placement context for the standard cell library by checking local placement context for boundary structure pairs comprising a first boundary structure from the reduced first boundary library and a second boundary structure from a second boundary library corresponding to a second boundary region of the standard cells; and responsive to an exception raised by the local placement context checking of a first boundary structure pair: identifying standard cell pairs, including a first standard cell and a second standard cell, that include the first boundary structure pair; and resolving, by the data processing system, the exception by performing an operation selected from: annotating the standard cell pairs that have the first boundary structure pair to constrain a subsequent standard cell placement resulting in a standard cell pair possessing the first boundary structure pair; and remediating the first boundary structure pair, wherein the remediating includes: generating a remediated first boundary structure pair including a remediated first boundary structure; and replacing instances of the first boundary structure in the first standard cell of standard cell pairs possessing the first boundary structure with the remediated first boundary structure.