Sep 18 2008
IBM and Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced an agreement to jointly develop and distribute next-generation computational lithography (CL) software solutions to enhance the imaging capability of lithographic systems used in the manufacturing of integrated circuits at the 22 nanometer (nm) node and beyond. The agreement is part of IBM's computation scaling initiative to create the industry's first computationally based process for production of 22nm semiconductors, also announced today.
"The industry faces a critical challenge at 22nm, where traditional approaches to device scaling are no longer feasible due to the laws of physics," said Gary Patton, vice president of IBM's Microelectronics Division. "Instead, we have to look to computational scaling solutions to take us to the next couple of process nodes. We're extremely excited about this unique partnership, which will allow us to deliver IBM's preeminence in lithography process technology, algorithms, and high performance computing through the proven, market-leading CalibreR nmPlatform. In the coming weeks IBM will have more to say about our plans and strategies regarding a comprehensive computational scaling (CS) ecosystem to support our strategy for computational scaling for 22nm, which we announced earlier today."
"This partnership is the continuation of a successful relationship that has been in place since IBM and Mentor first started working together on model-based optical proximity correction (OPC) solutions for the 130nm node, and extends the collaboration we both described last February (http://www.mentor.com/company/news/calibrenmopccellbeibm) around the Cell Broadband Engine? processor," said Joseph Sawicki, vice president and general manager of the Design to Silicon Division at Mentor Graphics. "We've moved beyond the typical EDA customer-supplier relationship to a true joint R&D effort that will result in great benefits for our customers-not just the ability to successfully image critical features for the 22nm node, but also innovative solutions to manage turnaround time and cost of computing, which are extremely important to our customers' overall success."
Joint development work will take place at Mentor's San Jose, IBM's East Fishkill and IBM Research's Yorktown locations. IBM and Mentor Graphics will develop unique methods and software, utilizing advanced mathematical techniques and software architectures, to achieve enhanced computational lithography capabilities enabling 22nm manufacturing.