With decreases in feature size come added complexities in the design. Layouts
must now be considered heavily in the design process as matching and parasitic effects
become the limiting factors in many precision and high-speed applications. The more
the designer knows about the process with respect to layout and modeling, the more
performance the engineer can "squeeze" out the design. However, performance is not
the only reason to consider the layout. The economic impact of IC layouts can be
detrimental to the circuit's marketing potential. In some cases a 20 percent increase in
chip area can reduce the profits of a chip by several hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Chip area should be considered as premium real estate. Therefore, much of the first ten