In this paper, we analyzed parasitic coupling capacitance coming from dummy metal fill and its impact on timing. Based on the modeling, we proposed two approaches to minimize the timing impact from dummy metal fill. The first approach applies more spacing between critical nets and metal fill, while the second approach leverages the shielding effects of reference nets. Experimental results show consistent improvement compared to traditional metal fill method.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1711.01407,
title = {Timing Aware Dummy Metal Fill Methodology},
author = {Luis Charre and Bruno Gravano and Rémi Pôssas and Chen Zheng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.01407},
year = {2017}
}