Problems / ECO / Electrical DRV fix (fanout, cap, transition)

Electrical DRV fix (fanout, cap, transition)

ECO medium interactive · in-browser

Electrical design-rule violation (DRV) fix. Not every violation is a slack violation. Every net also has to meet electrical rules, whatever the timing: max fanout (a driver may drive only so many loads), max capacitance (a net may carry only so much load capacitance), and max transition (the signal edge must be sharp enough, which fails when a driver cannot charge its load quickly).

The net here fans out to many sinks and breaks all three at once. The fix is to cut the load each driver sees by inserting buffers that split the fanout: each buffer re-drives a share of the sinks. But the original driver now drives the buffers, so its own fanout and capacitance climb with the buffer count. Over-buffer and it violates in turn, which is why a very wide net needs a buffer tree, not a flat row.

Click a slot to add or remove a buffer, and clear all three rules at every driver with the fewest buffers. Then Submit fix.