Hi @User, I am getting these metal density issues while executing tapeout job, I am not sure what these numbers indicate... How can I solve this issue?

@User Welcome to the party! 😁 https://skywater-pdk.slack.com/archives/C02KCG2DZK7/p1636665771044300 Look if this can help you, O/W you’re in a real trouble.

Thanks @User for pointing to the thread! Great i'll try this 🤞

@User Li1 needs to be at least 40 percent.

It's the complement of the local interconnect layer that needs to have at least 0.4 density, i.e.

li1_ca_density = 1 - li1_density

. In other words you cannot exceed 60% material in the local interconnect layer.

Oh right! What about the other layers?

Your other layers look fine. For the precheck the cutoff is 0.4 for all layers except m5_ca where it is 0.24. I guess the tapout job uses similar values.

@User, looks like a

li1_ca_density

issue..

It will be the same issue that lots of people around here had in the past few days. Your design probably has a lot of empty space to be filled with decap cells and the default decap cells are dense in the li1 layer. You can try reducing your macro area as @User mentioned. You can follow @User's posts above, setting

DECAP_CELL

and using the

mpw-3b

docker image. If that doesn't work for some reason, you can also try my alternative docker image mentioned in my post from yesterday.

I just notice that a lot of people use the default die size from the example project and then if the design is small they have a lot of space left.

@User, I can't find

mpw-3b

tag on efabless/openlane. Can you point me where it is? Also I tried setting DECAP_CELL in my config.tcl and the

li_ca density

improved but it is still less than 0.4 and thus the tapeout job is failing.. help needed!

I think mpw-3b was deleted because it had a problem. think I saw this in the #analog-design channel

Oh right! thanks @User. This is why I wasn't able to find it..

oh no, it was actually in this channel, https://skywater-pdk.slack.com/archives/C02KCG2DZK7/p1636780036081800

Hi @User, as attached in the above snippet, the

li1_ca_density

for my project is quite close to what is required i.e. 0.4... I am trying my best to solve the issue, but just wanted to know if this is acceptable somehow we couldn't meet 0.4?