US Patent 7284226 Methods and structures of providing modular integrated circuits

Modular wafers and integrated circuits (ICs), and methods of manufacturing modular ICs. A modular wafer can be optionally divided in various ways to avoid defects while producing a variety of modular ICs. A modular wafer includes an array of element dice separated by a scribe area. The scribe area includes interconnect lines that extend across the scribe area between each adjacent pair of the element dice. Unused interconnect lines can be pulled to a known value using weak pullups or pulldowns. Modular ICs can be manufactured with interconnect lines between each pair of adjacent element dice, in which case a single mask set can be used to manufacture a family of programmable logic devices (PLDs).