KLA-Tencor Touched by DFM Angel

Online staff -- Electronic News, 7/25/2005

In its latest step forward to provide critical yield management solutions for the growing design-for-manufacturing (DFM) market, KLA-Tencor has joined forces with DFM vendor Aprio Technologies to develop an integrated advanced mask design inspection and repair tool, both companies announced today.

The deal follows an announcement from KLA-Tencor investment partner KT Venture Group earlier this month that it would invest an undisclosed amount in Aprio Technologies.

At the core of this collaboration is Aprio’s Halo suite of manufacturing-side optical proximity correction (OPC) and lithography simulation tools, which will be incorporated into products under development at KLA-Tencor that address automated mask layout inspection.

By leveraging Halo, users will be able to quickly and accurately repair local mask layout errors identified by KLA-Tencor's mask layout inspections. Unlike first-generation OPC tools, Halo allows users to reconfigure an OPC design layout to correct problems and achieve optimal results without having to rerun the entire OPC generation by allowing designers to reuse existing OPC information. As a result, Halo can implement a design change in the mask data up to 30 times faster.
 
KLA-Tencor and Aprio agree on the need to address DFM challenges on the manufacturing side first, since that is the source for most DFM problems.

"Our customers that are moving to the 65nm process node can no longer afford to wait to find design issues in the manufacturing process," said Harold Lehon, VP of DFM solutions at KLA-Tencor, in a statement.

Both also agree on the need to shift from a rules-based handoff procedure to a models-based DFM methodology in order to address the yield impact of shrinking process windows and growing process variability on the design. A models-based approach allows companies to reduce their sampling and target their process control methods to design areas that matter most, reducing the amount of design rework needed, as well as improving yields, KLA-Tencor and Aprio said.

Initial availability of an integrated product from KLA-Tencor and Aprio is expected in 2006.