CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

4 June 2004

Product News

Magma and PDF Solutions to Create First-of-its-Kind IC Implementation Flow with Embedded Design for Manufacturability and Design for Yield Capability

Magma® Design Automation ( http://www.magma-da.com ) and PDF Solutions, Inc. have agreed on the preliminary terms whereby the two companies will create the first IC implementation flow with embedded capabilities for design for manufacturability (DFM) and design for yield (DFY). This new flow will enable integrated circuit (IC) designers to optimize the manufacturability and yields of chip designs earlier in the design process and without needing additional DFM or DFY tools or processes.

Magma will embed PDF Solutions' pDfxT DFM environment into Magma Blast Fusion®. By inserting pDfx into its products, Magma becomes the first electronic design automation (EDA) company to create a pDfx Compliant flow. This flow will enable designers to perform yield trade-off analysis-in concert with synthesis trade-off analyses for power, area and timing-all within the Magma design flow.

Using Magma products with embedded pDfx, designers can optimize IC designs for manufacturability and yield during the design process, all without changing their existing design flows or methods. This is a Magma and PDF Solutions® to Create First-of-its-Kind IC Implementation Flow With Embedded Design for Manufacturability and Design for Yield Capabilities major advancement over today's methods, where DFM point tools are used after tape-out in an attempt to refine a design for manufacturability. With Magma's pDfx Compliant DFM-aware flow, designers can accelerate IC design ramps to production-level yields, resulting in lower overall IC costs.

Initial efforts using the pDfx environment have resulted in designers achieving yield improvements ranging from 5- to 10-percent increases in net good die. This level of yield improvement is a major competitive advantage, especially in light of tighter supplies of nanometer wafers.

The first Magma solution with embedded pDfx will be Blast Fusion APX. Magma will be demonstrating beta versions of this offering to customers in booth 3919 in the Exhibit Hall at the conference, which runs June 7-11 at the San Diego Convention Center.

The pDfx environment packages PDF Solutions' deep knowledge of IC manufacturability and delivers it directly to IC designers. Using pDfx, designers can optimize products for manufacturability before tape-out, resulting in product cost savings and faster ramps to production-level yields. This reduces the need to re-spin mask sets for manufacturability issues, which is essential to designers as IC designs move to 130-nanometer and smaller technologies. pDfx integrates with intellectual property from the target process and with products from the top EDA vendors.

PDF Solutions, Inc. is a provider of process-design integration technologies to enhance IC manufacturability. PDF Solutions' software, methodologies and services enable semiconductor companies to create IC designs that are more manufacturable, and manufacturing processes that are more capable. By simulating nanometer-scale product and process interactions, PDF Solutions offers customers faster time-to-market, increased IC yield and performance, and improved product reliability and profitability. For more information, visit http://www.pdf.com

 

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