DFM/DFY: should you trust the surgeon or the family doctor?

ABSTRACT

Everybody agrees that curing DFM/DFY issues is of paramount importance at 65 nanometers and beyond. Unfortunately, there is disagreement about how and when to cure them. "Surgeons" suggest a GDSII-centered approach, potentially invasive, while "family doctors" recommend a more pervasive approach, starting from RTL. As in real life, "surgery" and "medicine" represent two different schools of thought in the DFM/DFY arena. Both involve risks.

This panel will examine these two approaches from high-level design all the way to manufacturing. We have assembled a set of panelists that represent a broad cross-section of semiconductor industry. Although there is general agreement among the panelists that both approaches are necessary and that prevention is the best way to proceed, they also acknowledge that the surgery may be unavoidable in such "hazardous" conditions as state-of-the-art technologies.

However, as always, "the devil is in the details," and the diverse approaches to DFM presented below should make this panel quite interesting. We are also counting on the feedback from the IC design community to assess if these approaches are sufficient and practical enough to deal with the "health hazards." We are looking forward to an exciting discussion that will challenge our esteemed panelists.