technology brief
Datapath Management for Semiconductor Design and Manufacturing Systems
The Challenges As the demand for smaller, lighter, faster, more sophisticated digital products explodes in many industries, semiconductor manufacturers are challenged to advance microchip technologies by shrinking device size while increasing chip performance. With feature sizes at 90 nm in production and 65 nm in R&D, more data must be captured to support yield management and designfor-manufacturing (DFM) requirements. Digital datapaths in the sub-90 nm device era are large and growing exponentially larger.
and feedback data analysis. Manufacturers must adopt aggressive resolution enhancement technology (RET) to enable them to attain acceptable yields at and below 90 nm. Unless semiconductor manufacturers pay careful, early attention to DFM requirements, they face costly design iterations, which may amount to more than $1M per mask set. Other significant costs may be accrued during manufacturing, if yield loss is high due to poorly implemented optical proximity correction (OPC).
Yield losses from “systematic defects” are quickly overshadowing losses from random defects such as particles. Identifying and characterizing these defects is a computationally intensive challenge. Analysis of these data streams to obtain actionable information is essential to the profitable production of today's complex semiconductor devices. As feature sizes drop below 90 nm, the boundaries between design, layout, manufacturing, and process control are becoming blurred, calling for increased integrated metrology (IM) and real-time feed-forward
...Forcing DFM into more steps in the process flow... Design Frontend Design Physical Design Mask
Mask data preparation/ optical proximity correction
Current processing architectures used to implement OPC are not keeping pace, causing delays and longer lead times from design to manufacture and thereby impacting time to market. Clearly, processor and datapath approaches used in today’s semiconductor microlithography processes must be significantly improved to reduce the design-to-manufacture timeframe and costly design rework.
Innovative Solutions from Mercury Mercury Computer Systems has unique, industry-leading computing solutions for handling data-intensive semiconductor design, simulation, imaging, and lithography applications.
Design-Enabled Lithography
Future DFM
Design-Enabled Lithography
Input: Device Design Data
Low-k1 Scanner and RET/OPC Mask Optimization Software
Litho-Enabled Design
Mask Manufacturing Manufacturing Lithography Wafer Processing
WaferNews source: Synopsys, Fab Managers’ Forum
Output Scanner Settings
Output RET Mask Data
Present DFM
Output Low-k1 Wafer Results
Lithography System
RET Technology Mask
Mask and Wafer Synthesis
Figure 1. DFM methodologies expand across the chip manufacturing ecosystem
Figure 2. An example of a feed-forward and feedback DFM implementation in a litho cell (Source: Semiconductor International)
The MultiCore Framework from Mercury employs sophisticated middleware that abstracts hardware capabilities and manages the distribution of data across multiple computing elements working in tandem. By leveraging the MultiCore Plus™ Advantage from Mercury, you can benefit from our multicore implementations of key algorithms, visualization tools, algorithm tuning, and more.
Our multicore systems handle computationally intensive datapaths cost-effectively and with ease. Mercury’s expanding product set based on the Cell Broadband Engine™ (BE) processor includes several options that are particularly well suited to addressing real-time semiconductor imaging challenges. The Cell BE processor is a breakthrough technology capable of massive floating-point processing for computeintensive applications. One Cell BE processor running at 3.2 GHz has 205 single-precision GFLOPS of performance in the SPE (synergistic processing element) array. Mercury has mapped key signal processing algorithms onto these processing solutions, significantly increasing the performance advantages for semiconductor inspection, OPC verification, and other high-performance computing applications.
effective computing solutions – from application-specific single-board computers to high-performance end-to-end systems – that are SEMI Certifiable and supported with copy-exact and ECO control. Mercury can work as an extension of your engineering team, designing products to meet the specific architectural, environmental, performance, and schedule requirements of your project. We can also provide robust performance analysis tools, optimal algorithm performance, scalable software middleware, and streaming I/O management.
Mercury's platforms excel at real-time sensor-based data mining and image processing. We deliver a full range of costSPE MFC LS SPE MFC LS SPE MFC LS SPE MFC LS
About Mercury Mercury is a complete OEM solutions provider with powerful, embedded hardware, software, and IP solutions at multiple price points. Over more than 20 years, we have developed a track record of technical prowess and market success in demanding, highly customizable, high-performance image and signal processing applications in the semiconductor equipment, defense, and other OEM industries. We provide the computing muscle for many applications that support yield enhancement, wafer and reticle inspection, metrology, and pattern management. Our proven competencies in creating intellectual property (IP) and optimizing multicore architectures make us uniquely qualified to address the challenges of your most computationally intensive DFM, IM, and RET applications.
L1 PPE L2 I/O Interface
EIB
XDR DRAM Interface
Coherent Interface
MFC SPE
LS
MFC SPE
LS
MFC SPE
LS
MFC SPE
LS
Figure 3. Cell BE processor functional block diagram Cell Broadband Engine is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. Challenges Drive Innovation and MultiCore Plus are trademarks of Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. All other products mentioned may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. believes this information is accurate as of its publication date and is not responsible for any inadvertent errors. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. Copyright © 2006 Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. 481.01E-0106-TB-semidatapath
Worldwide Locations Mercury Computer Systems has R&D, support and sales locations in France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. For office locations and contact information, please call the corporate headquarters or visit our Web site at www.mc.com.
Corporate Headquarters 199 Riverneck Road Chelmsford, MA 01824-2820 USA +1 (978) 967-1401 • +1 (866) 627-6951 Fax +1 (978) 256-3599 www.mc.com