CAD at the design-manufacturing interface

Abstract

Owing to rapid changes of IC technologies, traditionaldesign rule checking is becoming inadequate to assure satisfactorylevels of IC manufacturability. This paper describes a newcomputer supported design analysis environment that improvesthe efficiency of manufacturability assessment of new products.This environment, called MAPEX 2, is described in the paperalong with some of its key procedures and algorithms. Illustrationsof MAPEX 2 applications and performance figures are provided as well.