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Troubling utterances underscore the EDA vs. productivity disconnect |
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Jul 17, 2007 at 07:30 AM |
After Ed Grady of Brooks Automation and Doug Neugold of ATMI put in their two cents' worth about the 300-mm Prime initiative and its goal of wringing more productivity out of existing 300-mm fabs before transitioning to a larger (say, 450 mm) wafer size, a startling revelation came from the mouth of Aart de Geus, chairman/CEO of Synopsys at SEMI's Semicon West press conference yesterday: The discussion of 300-mm Prime at the media event was the first that de Geus had heard of the program.
When the top dog of a leading EDA company admits he knows nothing, nada, about one of the most important collaborative manufacturing-related activities, it makes me shudder about the true state and mindset of the design for manufacturability (DFM) movement.
Until the design folks get knowledegable about the productivity/manufacturing efficiency side of the fab equation, and innovate with all aspects of process and production in mind---from the cost of consumables to tool downtimes to high-mix factory uptimes and cycle rates---true DFM will never come to fruition, regardless of improved process flows and burgeoning computational simulation capabilities.
Isn't it time for DFM to incorporate DFP---design for productivity?
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