Data Handling Issues in Maskless Lithography

Future Maskless Lithography systems will require high throughput circuitry to interface to the writers. Previous works have demonstrated architectures for LZ decompression architectures to decrease chip pin count [1]. In this work we will compare compression done systolically and non-systolically at the circuit level. Furthermore, we analyze different techniques to get the data to the writers after decompression. Using Cadence Schematic editor and Analog Artist tools we verify the operation characteristics of these designs. We show the advantages of a nonsystolic decompressor over systolic, and analyze several shift register schemes for shifting data to the writers.