CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
2 June 2004
Company News
Si2 Announces New Coalition to Enhance Design-for-Manufacturability; Design-to-Manufacturing Coalition Formed to Create Open Standards
Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) announced the formation of the Design-to-Manufacturing Coalition (DTMC). This new group will address the increasing cost and complexities associated with design for manufacturability by creating open standards to unify IC design and manufacturing information, initially addressing lithography issues.
Charter member companies for the Phase 1 launch include: Applied Materials, Cadence Design Systems, DuPont Photomasks, Freescale Semiconductor Inc., LSI Logic, Photronics and Sagantec. Membership is open, and other companies are encouraged to join the DTMC.
The DTMC's business objective is to speed photomask and wafer manufacturing ramps and improve yields through the communication of more detailed and comprehensive design, mask and wafer process information. As a result, the coalition expects to lower manufacturing costs and shorten cycle times for IC manufacturers.
"The DTMC vision is to develop an open standard application program interface (API) to communicate more complete information about the IC design intent and the characteristics of the manufacturing equipment and processes between the supply chain partners. Applied Materials sees this as a critical benefit to our customers as we strive to reduce the cycle time between design inception and high-volume, high-yield manufacturing," says John Madok of Applied Materials, the newly elected chairman of the DTMC.
"The intrinsic couplings permeating sub-90nm processes have created an economic imperative for the semiconductor industry to shift to the `system view,' because isolated flows for design and manufacturing are growing more inefficient," states Steve Schulz, president and CEO of Si2. "The companies committed to the DTMC recognize this as an industry problem that can only be solved through broad cross-industry collaboration. The result will be new standard interfaces, models and semantics that permit streamlined data integration, opening up new opportunities for competitive solutions and a more efficient industry."
For more information about DTMC, visit http://www.si2.org/oa-udm
Si2 is a non-profit organization of industry-leading EDA, semiconductor and electronic system design companies focused on improving productivity and reducing cost in creating and producing integrated silicon systems.
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