Aki Fujimura, Chief Technology Officer, Cadence Design Systems

Today's complex designs contain reticle enhancement techniques, including optical proximity correction, phase-shift masks and exponentially large file sizes that require a new collaboration between designers, mask manufacturers and the entire design chain. It's imperative that these constituents work to establish a design methodology and validate manufacturing readiness through technology milestones and proof points at current and advanced process geometries, to ultimately reach volume production, with a balance between cost and performance. Promising to offer compelling performance advantages with no increased costs, a new interconnect design architecture has been validated by recent production design activity and handoff to manufacturing. The manufacturability of this design methodology has also been validated through an innovative collaborative model that involved technical input from key members of the design-to-silicon supply chain.This paper discusses the factors driving the critical performance and cost trade-offs inherent in advanced designs, while exploring how this new interconnect design architecture is designed to enhance both.