Abstract
The complexity and difficulty of mask manufacturing has increased in the deep sub-micron ear makes the cost of masks has been increasing significantly. The higher mask cost and the larger number of masks (to provide more metal layers for routing) has caused the Non-Recurring Engineering cost (the NRE cost), to increases substantially among the development cost. Reducing the number of masks in a design not only saves cost but also shorten the product cycle because the time reduction for mask manufacturing. In this thesis, we consider the extreme case where a design can be only decided by programming one mask, the design style of which is called One Mask Programmable Gate Array (OMPCA). To achieve OMPCA design, many design and CAD issues must be solved. The design issues include to design one-mask programmable cells, and to design the one-mask programmable routing architecture. The function and routing nets of a design can only be decided by programming via34. The CAD issues include to integrate different commercial tools and to build up an OMPCA flow. Besides, we would create a transformation program called morphing to transform semi-finished designs generated by commercial tools to OMPCA designs.