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Product Briefing Outline: Brion Technologies has launched ‘Tachyon 2.0,' its second-generation computational lithography platform. Designed for DFM challenges at the 45nm and 32nm nodes, Tachyon 2.0 is claimed to offer a 4x increase in modeling power and a significant increase in the speed of optical proximity correction (OPC) and OPC verification. With improved process-window accuracy and speed, a single Tachyon 2.0 system rack provides the same production capacity as four first generation Tachyon racks, according to the company. Brion will deliver beta Tachyon 2.0 systems in March with midyear volume shipments.

Problem: Moving into the deep subwavelength lithography era, more and more designs are relying on complex OPC. The need to correct and verify designs efficiently during production is more critical than ever. Tachyon 2.0 is intended to provide the necessary computational power and speed for both production and R&D for the next several generations of IC designs.

Solution: Tachyon 2.0 provides a tightly integrated hardware and software platform, bringing greatly improved full-chip optical simulation technology to its users. Tachyon 2.0 improves modeling power by 4x, supporting up to 256 complex optical simulation kernels and up to an 8μ diameter optical interaction range for 45nm designs, according to the company. Tachyon 2.0 also incorporates advancements in hardware-accelerated design that reduce power consumption by more than 50 percent when compared with a first-generation Tachyon system with equivalent computational throughput. All of these improvements help to reduce cost of ownership, as well as provide advanced capabilities, such as 3D photomask lithography simulation.

Applications: DFM challenges at the 45nm and 32nm nodes including 3D photomask lithography simulation. Up to 256 complex kernels for optical modeling and up to 8μm diameter optical interaction range.

Platform: Built with IBM Linux servers with a flexible FPGA co-processing configuration. Tachyon 2.0 gives users the advantages of a single-source supply for both the hardware and software elements of an OPC correction and design verification system. Over 20 semiconductor manufacturers utilize Tachyon to verify their designs. There have been more than 50 Tachyon system racks built, and they have processed thousands of critical layers in customers' designs.

Availability: March 2007 onwards.