Abstract
As the shrinking of the feature size and the delay of the next generation lithography, double patterning lithography (DPL) is no longer enough for 14/10nm technology. Triple patterning lithography (TPL) is a nature extension from DPL, and it can not only triple the pitch but also reduce stitches and native conflicts. Although TPL is more difficult and complicated than DPL, TPL is inevasible for 14/10nm technology. In this thesis, we consider TPL during the standard cell legalization stage in order to let the resultant placement be more friendly to TPL decomposition. We provide a novel idea of reducing TPL conflicts through cell reordering and white space insertion. The experimental results show that as compared to a conventional legalizer, our legalizer is able to effectively reduce the number of conflicts and the number of stitches.