What is GTviewer?

The process engineer who wants to measure special structures, or the design engineer who wants to check the final layout of his chip, need to display large GDSII/OASIS layout databases. Unfortunately, most layout editors are complex to run, require large memory and disk space for full-chip display.

Leveraging unique technology for handling large layout databases, XYALIS offers GTviewer, a fast and easy-to-use tool to display large layout databases in GDSII or OASIS format.

GTviewer is unique for its capability as a viewer for the largest databases with low disk and memory requirements. GTviewer directly works on compressed or gzipped databases without creating temporary data on disk and with no impact on load time. In its low-memory mode, GTviewer has no limit in the size of layout databases it can load and display. 

GTviewer is the only tool, which displays a top view or a vertical cut view. This makes GTviewer the ideal tool to share layout information between process and design engineers.

GTviewer has a user-friendly graphical interface, which includes the most common navigation, measure, display and hierarchical browsing features.

By providing the same user interface from PCs running Windows or Linux to high-end workstations, GTviewer enables different design teams with different platforms to efficiently share layout data without error. 

GTviewer also provides a powerful tool for documentation with its integrated snapshot feature. With a single click, GTviewer creates a screen snapshot in the most popular formats such as GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PostScript, etc. Users can chose a black or white background to maximize readability and printability.

GTviewer is the direct result of the expertise developed in GTsuite, the GDSII/OASIS manipulation tools created by XYALIS.

Main features

Reads directly compressed or gzipped GDSII/OASIS files with minimum memory, disk usage and no temporary file creation or speed impact
Low-memory mode allows to read huge data-base (no limit) with minimum memory requirements
Possibility to filter unused data during GDSII/OASIS input in order to furthermore reduce memory usage
Hierarchical browser and navigation
Selective hierarchical display allows to view only selected branches of the hierarchy tree
"Where are you" function gives all the data regarding layers and hierarchy
"GoTo" function
Easy -to-use ruler, color and pattern selection, layer and data-type selection
Integrated snapshot function to generate most popular formats (JPEG, TIFF, PostScript...)
Instantaneous redraw of saved views.
Smart handling of corrupted GDSII/OASIS databases (multiple top cells, missing cells, ...)
Display a vertical cut view of any part of the chip for device analysis
On-line help

Key benefits

Reduce time to load and display largest layout databases
Works on any machine with minimum disk and memory requirements on compressed databases
Make layout data sharing easy and convenient
Address documentation needs

Supported platforms

SUN Sparc Stations, 32 and 64 bits, Solaris 2.5 and + HP HPUX 11.x x86 PC Linux RedHat 3 and + x86-64 PC Linux RedHat 3 and + ItaniumII Linux RedHat 3 and +