MINIMUM LAYOUT PERTURBATION-BASED ARTWORK LEGALIZATION WITH GRID CONSTRAINTS FOR HIERARCHICAL DESIGNS

A method comprises extracting a hierarchical grid constraint set and modeling one or more critical objects of at least one cell as a variable set. The method further comprises solving a linear programming problem based on the hierarchical grid constraint set with the variable set to provide initial locations of the critical objects of the at least one cell and determining target on-grid locations of the one or more critical objects in the at least one cell using the results of the linear programming solution.