Standard cell
In the microelectronic design, standard cell stands for a fixed implementation of a logic gate that was designed for use in complex digital circuits .
In the case of standard cells, the layout of the single gate is already determined before the start of the design. The design with standard cells reduces the risk of malfunctions, since the verification effort for a circuit designed with it can be drastically reduced. In contrast, with the manual layout of larger digital circuits, the total area can be additionally minimized.
Standard cells are specifically designed for a manufacturing process and measured and characterized with suitable test structures even before the start of mass production. In this way, the complete circuit properties are recorded over the planned operating range (voltage, temperature) and converted into corresponding simulation models.
The complexity of standard cells ranges from the simplest cells ( inverters made up of two transistors ) typically to flip-flops (up to approx. 25 transistors).