Salicide Error
Yup, this is how people get confused. Lets clear this up:
1 - Salicide is a Self-alligned silicide. To make silicide they deposit metal on top of the silicon and heat it up, causing the silicon to go down in resistance. Therefore Salicide is used to reduce the resistance of silicon, poly, etc...
2 - By default, they use salicide everywhere since for digital circuits this is an advantage. For analog circuits, we sometimes want high resistance (resistors). Also, MOS with salicide have much worse matching, therefore analog guys sometimes don't want the salicide. Hence they created a salicide blocking mask.
3 - The salicide blocking mask is also often called salicide in the layout engine. This can lead to confusion. Some people then assume that Salicide increases resistance, when in fact salicide decreases resistance. The salicide in the layout does increase the resistance because it blocks out salicide.
Greg