News Release from: Zkom
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 11 January 2005
Chinese chip makers hear of submicron technologies
Dortmund-based Zkom was the only German company to be represented at the Congress to mark the tenth anniversary of the Chinese Computer Chip Industry Association.
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Dortmund-based Zkom was the only German company to be represented at the Congress to mark the tenth anniversary of the Chinese Computer Chip Industry Association. The German company presented its Crystal Yield software for optimising IC design at the event held in Shanghai. This international congress to mark the 10th anniversary of the Chinese IC design industry was held at the Shanghai Convention Hotel in December 2004.
Around 800 participants, mostly IC designers and microelectronics researchers, attended this high-octane event.
Michael Hartung, Managing Director of Zkom, was the only German guest speaker.
His paper focused on the highly topical subject of local 'mismatch handling' in the field of submicron technologies.
Owing to the unbroken miniaturisation trend in the electronics industry this topic belongs to the key factors of the successful further development of ever more powerful, smaller and more reliable integrated circuits.
The congress went hand in hand with an exhibition at which providers of EDA solutions (electronic design automation) presented their current product ranges.
The current 4.0 build of the statistical simulation program, Crystal Yield, which was developed by Zkom, was demonstrated at the exhibition booth of the Chinese distributor, EastWell Technologies.
Conventional simulators are only capable of simulating the circuit behaviour of chips given an ideal state.
However, such simulators fail to take consideration of deviations that are unavoidable during production regardless of the respective manufacturing process.
This results in an increased volume of scrap production.
Crystal Yield is the only software worldwide that is capable of a-priori calculation of production fluctuations for individual devices (local mismatch) on a chip.
Crystal Yield thus makes it possible for IC designers to realistically simulate production fluctuations already during the design stage.
Critical devices are described quantitatively and can therefore be modified prior to production.
This ensures optimum yield during mass production and substantially more reliable chips - regardless of whether these are processor, storage, radio-frequency or other chips.
Crystal Yield thus closes the critical gap between circuit design and production.
'Our solution has also met with great interest in China', said Michael Hartung after the congress.
'The Chinese chip designers and producers are extremely ambitious'.
'And Crystal Yield offers precisely the potential that is required to exert a sustainable and positive influence on innovation and reliability in the field of submicron technologies'.
'The event thus already provided us with an opportunity to conclude a new distribution contract as well as arrange for additional end user evaluations of our software at two major and several medium-sized Chinese chip manufacturers'.
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