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Product Briefing Outline: KLA-Tencor has updated and improved its PROLITH lithography optimization product with the launch of PROLITH 10. The new upgrades are designed to enable users to accurately predict lithography process windows for
designs down to 32nm. KLA-Tencor claims that with the accuracy of PROLITH 10, customers have already cut costly experimental lithography wafer runs by up to half, as well as dramatically reducing cycle time to production and speeding time to market.

Problem: It has become virtually impossible to develop a lithography recipe for 32nm designs without an accurate understanding of the impact of OPC (optical proximity correction) on the design due to the low K1 imaging effects.

Solution: For the first time, development groups can utilize on-the-fly exploration modeling to confidently design for the most aggressive - or most cost effective - OPC, knowing that they can quickly and accurately predict production results before
a mature process is available. The latest version of PROLITH enables detailed, predictive model-based OPC, with next-generation shape definition, for immersion lithography-based designs; this provides design for manufacturing (DFM) insight early in the development cycle. Making on-the-fly tradeoffs between process and OPC application, or "co-optimization" of OPC and process is now possible using PROLITH 10.

Applications: Simulates optical lithography, including OPC as well as full resist process, process performance improvements and the effects of process variables.

Platform: PROLITH is a key element in the portfolio of lithography optimization technologies from KLA-Tencor. The ProDATA process window analysis and SEM image analysis tool works with PROLITH to deliver faster lithography optimization.

Availability: February 2007 onwards.