After a three-year development effort, Clear Shape Technologies has hung out its shingle as a design-for-manufacturing (DFM) technology house with systematic process variability as its target. Two flag-ship products will take a dual approach to addressing a leading cause of yield loss at 90 nm and below.
InShape is a model-based, full-chip design-manufacturability checker that predicts accurate silicon shapes. Its model-based, nonlinear optical transformation algorithm quickly and accurately detects potential manufacturing failures during physical design that would otherwise be found after tape-out in mask or silicon.
The compact models encapsulate all necessary reticle-enhancement technology (RET), optical-proximity correction (OPC), mask, etch, and lithography effects on both device and interconnect. They also predict accurate contours for the entire chip from drawn layout in a matter of hours.
The OutPerform silicon-correlated electrical DFM analysis and optimization tool plugs into existing flows for cell design, IP, custom analog, and cell-based digital design. It takes in the designers timing and place and route data, along with encrypted fab technology files, and identifies timing and leakage parametric hotspots for violations due to systematic variations.
Additionally, its timing optimization directives drive the place and route tools. OutPerform gets its silicon-accurate critical dimensions (CD) for devices and interconnects from InShape.
Pricing for both InShape and OutPerform starts at $300,000 each per master license per year. Both tools are available on Linux platforms.
Clear Shape Technologies
www.clearshape.com