In one embodiment, the present invention is a method and apparatus for
net-aware critical area extraction. One embodiment of the inventive
method for determining the critical area of an integrated circuit
includes modeling a net corresponding to the integrated circuit as a
graph, where the net is made up of a plurality of interconnected shapes
spanning one or more layers of the integrated circuit. All generators for
opens are then defined and identified. The Voronoi diagram of the
identified generators is computed, and the critical area is computed in
accordance with the Voronoi diagram.