Embedded tutorial I: design for manufacturability

ABSTRACT

DFM (Design for Manufacturability) has recently become a buzzword; it excites passion in semiconductor process, design, EDA and manufacturing circles. What is all this hype about?This tutorial reviews DFM, the ugly cousin of technology scaling, in a broad context, and includes both hard defects and parametric variations arising from manufacturing issues in its scope. It presents the various sources of the problem and their impact on yield, silicon vs. timing model correlation, mask cost, data size and time-to-market. It then presents design methodology and EDA tool solutions, both current and future, including restrictive design rules, preferred rules, layout fixes, design-manufacturing integration, lay-out-dependent modeling, variation-aware analysis and design.This tutorial is intended for engineers and project managers involved in design, EDA, OPC/RET/tapeout and design rule formulation.