This is rather a very curious query I had, when I was learning Magic VLSI Layout tool, and I am very sure, every fresher layout engineer back there, will have a similar curiosity.

I went ahead and had a detailed discussion about this with Tim Edwards, SVP Analog at Efabless Corp. Pvt. Ltd.

Here’s how it went:

Question) I am referring to your below comment in "Magic Maintainer’s Manual #3: Display Styles, Colormaps, and Glyphs"

Where is the man page?

I do not see it under below link

http://www.opencircuitdesign.com/magic/index.html

 

Answer) If you install from source, the man page ends up in the usual place (or what used to be the usual place) in /usr/local/man/.  I can convert the man pages on my system to HTML and post them on the "Documentation" page.  There are a number of them, including ones on the .ext and .sim formats, ext2spice and ext2sim, and so forth. You will now find it there under "Documentation" (button in the frame on the left).  The man pages are rather outdated; I need to go update them sometime.  But at least I have them in HTML format on the website now.

 

Question) The thing, I am trying to do here is find out the below mapping (for eg. nwell 12, what does '12' refer to)

 

styles

 styletype  mos

  nwell  12

  pwell  13

  metal1  20

  nfet  6

  nfet  7

  pfet  8

  pfet  9

  ndiff  2

  pdiff  4

  ndc  2

  ndc  20

  ndc  32

  pdc  4

  pdc  20

  pdc  32

  nsc  3

  nsc  20

  nsc  32

  psc  5

  psc  20

  psc  32

  poly  1

  pcontact  1

  pcontact  20

  pcontact  32

end

 

Answer) I always found the numbers to be very confusing, so I changed the format to use the style names instead of numbers (but it's backwards-compatible). The numbers (and names) come from the "dstyle" file, which in a standard install will be in:

        /usr/local/lib/magic/sys/mos.OpenGL.dstyle

for the OpenGL interface, and

        /usr/local/lib/magic/sys/mos.24bit.dstyle

otherwise (the "7bit" graphics can only be used by a graphics card that can do 8-bit overlays on top of a 24-bit visual.  Old Matrox cards used to support this back in the early 2000's, but I haven't seen any
recently, and Matrox went out of business a long time ago.  I coded in a whole bunch of bit-block transfer routines to make the 24-bit graphics fast once I realized that 8-bit overlays were gone and not coming back).

Anyway, in the .dstyle file, you'll find lines that look like this:

# num   opaque  color   outline  fill  number   name     name
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
10      63      6       0x00    stipple 7       -       cwell
52      92      2       0x00    stipple 19      -       cwellnsc
79      63      4       0x00    stipple 21      -       highvolt_nwell
80      63      5       0x00    stipple 22      -       highvolt_pwell
12      63      2       0xff    stipple 2       -       nwell

Note the last line I copied above from the file. . . This is the number 12 in the "styles" section you quoted.  The more "modern" way to write the style section is

   styles
      styletype mos
          nwell nwell

Which is also a bit confusing, but the first "nwell" is the layer type, and the second "nwell" is the style name.  It would probably make more sense if the layer name was called "yellow_sparse_stripes" or something.

Question) In tech file, for pcontact, I see below

  pcontact  1

  pcontact  20

  pcontact  32

 

Whereas in dstyle file, I see below

# num   opaque  color   outline  fill  number   name     name
#----------------------------------------------------------------------

74      127     45      0x00    solid   0       -       pcontact

 

Are the numbers (1, 20, 32) in tech file coming because of color coding of below overlaps?

# num   opaque  color   outline  fill  number   name     name
#----------------------------------------------------------------------

1       120     1       0x00    solid   0       -       polysilicon

20      80      8       0x00    solid   0       -       metal1

32      92      7       0xff    cross   0       -       contact_X'es

 

Answer) Yes.  As I said, I think it would be better if the "name" entry says something about what the pattern and color looks like, such as "yellow-sparse-stripes".  So number 74 "pcontact" is a purple color that blends the blue of metal1 and the red of poly.  It's a nice style to use for poly contacts, which is why the style is called "pcontact".  But the OpenGL graphics blends colors together anyway, so style "polysilicon" (which is solid red) and style "metal1" (which is solid light blue) blended together also make a nice purple color, so the combination of those styles works just as well.

In general, the 2nd form is easier to work with, since for any contact, you can just blend the two colors of the layers that make up the contact, then add some boundary or X or stipple pattern to make it stand out as a contact.

Now you see, how asking the right questions helps….

All above discussion is also captured in form of online course below:

https://www.udemy.com/vlsi-academy-custom-layout/

All the best and happy learning…