Pin access

Pin access. A standard-cell pin is a small metal shape, and the router can only drop a via onto it from a few nearby routing tracks - the pin's candidate access points. When neighbouring cells crowd together, their pins compete for the same tracks.

• Every pin on its own track - each column is a routing track, each row a pin; a hollow dot is a track the pin could use, the filled dot is the one it uses now. Two pins on the same track collide (red), because a single vertical track cannot access both. Click a pin to move it to another candidate track so every pin has a clear one.

This local competition for access points is one of the hardest parts of detailed routing at advanced nodes. Give every pin its own track, then Submit design.