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D2S Enables "Stitchless" Full-Chip Inverse Lithography Technology In A Single Day For The Multi-Beam EraSAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- D2S, a supplier of GPU-accelerated solutions for semiconductor manufacturing, today introduced TrueMask® ILT, a GPU-accelerated hardware and software system that enables IC manufacturers to implement stitchless, full-chip inverse lithography technology (ILT) for advanced-node designs in a single day. TrueMask ILT is a holistically conceived, purpose-built system with every component – including hardware, software, models, visualization and verification – designed and optimized for ILT. This system employs a unique GPU-accelerated approach that emulates a single, giant GPU/CPU pair that can compute an entire full-chip ILT solution at once. The result is a breakthrough in computational performance that finally makes full-chip ILT a practical solution for improved design manufacturability. Engineers from Micron Technology, a leading memory manufacturer, co-authored a paper with D2S that highlights TrueMask ILT, titled "Study of mask and wafer co-design that utilizes a new extreme single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) approach to computing in memory manufacturing." The paper will be presented orally at the SPIE Photomask Technology 2019 Conference in Monterey, Calif., on Tuesday, September 17 in Session 8 on Mask Data Prep MDP and Curvilinear Data Handling. "In our joint study with D2S, we examined the benefits of a mask and wafer co-design, which leverages and maximizes GPU acceleration to implement full-chip curvilinear ILT for advanced semiconductor memory manufacturing," stated Ezequiel Russell, Senior Director of Mask Technology at Micron. "The results of this joint study show that curvilinear ILT provides larger process windows compared to conventional ILT or complex OPC." Full Chip in a Day: The Holy Grail of ILT Previous attempts to overcome this final hurdle involved dividing the cip into partitions, running the computations for each partition in parallel, and then "stitching" the partitions back together. However, chip partitioning introduces errors that must be corrected once the partitions are stitched together. This correction, in turn, requires additional computations, which can give rise to additional stitching errors. A "stitchless" solution avoids both the runtime increase and stitching artifacts. "For years, ILT has been seen as a promising solution to many of the challenges of advanced-node lithography, but the ability to implement ILT across the entire chip layout in a timely fashion had been out of reach," according to Dr. Leo Pang, chief product officer and executive vice president at D2S. "Wafer fabs need to deliver wafers in the shortest time possible, which requires ILT process time to be shrunk to a single day in order to be practical. D2S TrueMask ILT is the first commercial ILT solution that delivers full-chip ILT within this time constraint." A Purpose-Built System Enables Stitchless, Full-Chip ILT In a Day Every component of TrueMask ILT – the GPU-accelerated D2S Computational Design Platform (CDP), curvilinear mask and wafer lithography simulation and verification software, models, geometry libraries, visualization, etc. – was purpose-built for GPU-acceleration and for full-chip ILT computation. Every aspect of the physics and chemistry of wafer lithography and processing has been modeled and optimized synergistically throughout the system in order to reap the largest potential run-time benefits without compromising computational accuracy. TrueMask ILT Facilitates Curvilinear Shapes for Greater Design Manufacturability A backgrounder detailing the importance of stitchless, full-chip ILT in a day can be downloaded at https://design2silicon.com/products/truemask-ilt. Videos featuring D2S spokespeople describing TrueMask ILT will be available soon and can also be viewed here. About D2S D2S, the D2S logo and TrueMask are registered trademarks of D2S, Inc. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/d2s-enables-stitchless-full-chip-inverse-lithography-technology-in-a-single-day-for-the-multi-beam-era-300918138.html SOURCE D2S |