Si2 announces five new members in DFM coalition

AUSTIN, USA: The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) recently announced that five new members had joined the Design-For-Manufacturability Coalition (DFMC), which will build on previous efforts to ensure that ICs can be manufactured in accordance with the original design intent.

The new members include Infineon, Intel, Mentor Graphics, STARC, and UMC. They join founding members Cadence, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Ponte Solutions, Sagantec, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments (TI).

In addition, TI has assumed the role of Chair for the DFMC, a leadership position, which helps drive the goals and activities of the Coalition. The former Chair, Freescale Semiconductor, will assume the role of Past-Chair.

DFMC's purpose is to specify open-standards for software interfaces between EDA software tools and manufacturing software. The specification includes standard terminology definitions, semantics and exchange formats for relevant manufacturing information. It also includes standard software application program interfaces (API) for models describing different manufacturing processes, yield mechanisms and circuit behaviors.

According to Nobuyuki Nishiguchi, vice president and general manager, Development Department-1 of STARC: "DFM issues are becoming one of the major bottlenecks to the creation of the low power, low cost, system LSI, which our member companies are eager to build. We have great expectations that by specifying and promoting globally accepted Open Standards, the DFMC can significantly accelerate the development and deployment of effective DFM design flows and facilitate the communication of design intent to the fab."

STARC is a consortium of major Japanese semiconductor manufacturers whose mission is developing leading-edge system LSI design technologies.

“I’m excited to contribute to the DFMC as chair for 2008. Given the importance of DFM to the semiconductor industry, TI believes that the DFMC’s momentum will only grow,” says Mark Mason, director for Design Data Integration at Texas Instruments, and the new Chair of the DFMC. “As the industry addresses the challenges that new technology nodes present, close partnership with foundries and facilitation by organizations like the DFMC will be critical for industry success.”

The DFMC will vote by year’s end to release their “DFM Dictionary” that now has almost 200 parameter definitions that will be used by DFM models, engines and tools. The DFM Dictionary is a recent work effort of the DFMC. Future DFMC goals include establishing a DFM Parameter API, which will allow models, engines or tools to ask for defined DFM parameters by name and get them in clear text or encrypted formats.

Si2 is an organization of industry-leading semiconductor, systems, EDA and manufacturing companies focused on improving the way integrated circuits are designed and manufactured in order to speed time-to-market, reduce costs, and meet the challenges of sub-micron design.

Si2 is uniquely positioned to enable collaboration through a strong implementation focus driven by its member companies. Si2 focuses on developing practical technology solutions to industry challenges. The coalition represents over 100 companies involved in all parts of the silicon supply chain.