ABSTRACT
For a next-generation 45-nm lithography system, using 25-nm, 5-bit gray pixels, a typical image of only one layer of a 2 cm× 1 cm chip represents 1.6 terabits of data. A direct-write maskless
in order tomeet the current industry production throughput of onewafer per layer perminute [7]. These enormous data sizes, and data transfer rates, motivate the application of lossless data compression to VLSI layout data.
