DRC is the acronym for Design Rule Check which checks the physical layout of the design for any potential violations of the fabrication recommendations specified by the foundries for a particular technology. DRC can be specified in a file format to the EDA tools. For example: the foundries may specify width of the metal wires for different layers. Other parameters may be metal spacing, polysilicon width, polysilicon to metal wire spacing, well to well spacing etc. Violation of DRC rules may reduce the yield tremendously by affecting the manufacturability of the design. Some designs may demand a careful relaxation of the DRC rules to attain a high packing density. Typical example is the SRAM design.
