Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Zkom | Subject: Crystal Yield
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 31 October 2003
Simulator irons out process bugs before
production
A new software product promises considerable cost reductions during the development of integrated circuits and substantially higher yields in chip production.
A new software product promises considerable cost reductions during the development of integrated circuits and substantially higher yields in chip production Dortmund-based Zkom reckons that the typical cost of developing a typical new device is of the order of US $500 million
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 13 Mar 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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But now a realistic and fully software-based can optimise the entire process chain from chip design to mass production.
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A part of this is used for so-called simulators.
These are software solutions that test the circuit properties of chips during the design phase.
The conventional simulators used up to now are only capable of representing the circuit behaviour of chips given an ideal state.
However, deviations that are unavoidable during chip production and irrespective of the process used are not taken into consideration.
This results in an increasingly high volume of scrap during production.
Crystal Yield closes this gap.
Unlike conventional simulators, this software is capable of integrating production deviations in the form of statistical parameters into the analysis and to test the circuits accordingly.
In doing so, Crystal Yield can simultaneously test several tens of thousands of devices and identify any that are problematic.
Now, circuit designers, especially those using submicron technologies, can test their circuit designs in "quasi real" conditions without having to preproduce a single chip.
This reduces the need for expensive and time-consuming prototype and test-series productions and at the same time ensures considerable increases in mass production yield.
Both factors provide companies with competition-relevant cost and time advantages and sustainably foster the innovation potential of the chip industries.
Developed with the benefit of scientific support, Crystal Yield has already undergone successful industrial testing.
Among others, IBM/Hitachi, Infineon, NEC and Elmos are using this new method of circuit simulation and have already been able to save several millions of dollars in the process.
Michael Hartung, Managing Director of Zkom, is now spearheading active sales in the USA and Asia.
"We sell our product where chips are developed.
An international marketing approach is therefore natural for us", he says.
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