Clear Shape Debuts with Comprehensive Variability Platform Enabling Entitled Design Performance and Yield
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Model-based solutions and key underlying technologies silicon verified by several customers
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Clear Shape Technologies, Inc. formally introduced itself today as a DFM solutions provider delivering variability solutions that enable chip designers to control and optimize the parametric and catastrophic impact of systematic manufacturing variations. After 3 years of development of key patent-pending technologies and successful joint work with several customers and foundries, Clear Shape also announced today two products that enable designers and manufacturers to achieve entitled performance and yield.
Clear Shape has raised $10 million of funding to date, from premiere firms such as USVP, Intel Capital, KT Ventures (KLA-Tencor), and AsiaTech. The company's board of outside directors includes Winston S. Fu, Ph.D., General Partner, US Venture Partners, and Professor Thomas Kailath, Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, Stanford University.
"The foundation that was the basis for the contract between IC design and manufacturing has been shaken as 'rule-based' assumptions have steadily crumbled. Manufacturing variations now dramatically and adversely impact chip performance and yield. There is a dire need for tools and technologies that reinstate designers' confidence that their chips will achieve entitled performance and be manufacturable at high yields," stated Atul Sharan, President and CEO of Clear Shape. "For three years now, Clear Shape has been focused on building innovative model-based solutions from the ground up resulting in its Variability Platform."
Importance of Variability-Aware Electrical Design
At 90 nm and below, systematic variations are the greatest cause of catastrophic chip failures and electrical issues related to timing, signal integrity and leakage power. For example, at 65 nanometers, systematic variations of 3nm on a transistor gate can cause a 20% variation in delay and have a 2x impact on leakage power.
Up to 90nm, the industry addressed 'yield' issues with post-tape-out compute-intensive OPC and RET techniques without designers getting involved. This landscape changes at sub-90nm when systematic variations affect both designers and manufacturers. These pattern-dependent systematic variations due to lithography, CMP etc. cannot be accounted for using traditional rule-based tools and methodologies.
With the current corner-based design methodologies and tools, margins are applied everywhere regardless of context. This over-design with excessive guard-banding can result in chip performance that is dramatically lower than entitled performance, also resulting in unexpected parametric and catastrophic failures.
To address these fundamental limitations of the current design infrastructure, Clear Shape has developed a variability platform based on its innovative model-based solution that incorporates process information related to lithography, RET, OPC, CMP, mask, etch, interconnect parasitics, and transistor modeling. Instead of working from ideal layout and approximating the systematic variations effects through excessive rules and margins, designers can now implement, verify and optimize their design based on true silicon shapes, quickly and accurately detect potential manufacturing failures during physical design and use Clear Shape's in-context model-based electrical DFM to optimize their electrical parameters within their existing rule-based design tools.
Clear Shape's goal is to enable designers to achieve entitled performance and yield by providing tools and technologies that fit non-disruptively into existing design flows.
Management Team
- Dr. Yao-Ting Wang: Co-founder, CTO and Chairman, was a co-founder of
Numerical Technologies, where he drove development of technology and
products that address fundamental problems that resulted from ever-
decreasing feature sizes falling below the wavelength of light source
used in the lithography systems. He has extensive technology expertise
in the fields of lithography, lithography simulation, and its impact on
the EDA design flow, and is the inventor of some key RET techniques
that are in wide use.
- Atul Sharan: Co-founder, President and CEO, was resident at Mohr-
Davidow ventures, a premier Silicon Valley venture capital firm, prior
to co-founding Clear Shape. Earlier, as Vice-President, he led
Synopsys's DFM strategy following their acquisition of Numerical
Technologies, where he had served as senior vice president of sales and
marketing. Mr. Sharan also held executive positions at Ambit and VLSI
Technologies/Compass.
- Dr. Fang-Cheng Chang: Co-founder, VP of Engineering, was a founding
employee of Numerical Technologies, and as VP of R & D he led all the
early development efforts that spanned the company's entire product
lines from design to manufacturing and was a substantial contributor to
the company's patent portfolio.
Other members of Clear Shape's executive team include:
- Dr. Nishath Verghese: VP of Engineering for Design Technology, led
engineering for Cadence's timing library characterization, delay
calculation products, and noise analysis core engines, and was an
architect and principal at CadMOS Design Technology.
- Nitin Deo: VP of Marketing, Business Development, and International
Sales, worked as Sr. VP of Marketing & Business Development at Ponte,
and as GM for Japan operations and VP of marketing and business
development at Magma. Mr. Deo has also worked at Synopsys, Fujitsu and
Philips.
- Dr. Philippe Hurat: Sr. Director of Customer Applications and Technical
Marketing, has over 15 years of experience in the semiconductor and EDA
industries spanning chip-design, product management and applications.
Products
In separate announcements today, Clear Shape has announced its two flagship DFM products that comprise a comprehensive Variability Platform:
- InShape(TM), a full-chip Design Manufacturability Checker that improves
yield and enables eDFM through generation of accurate silicon contours
across process window. InShape is the only DFM product in its class
that is in the qualification program of all the major foundry platforms
including UMC and IBM-Samsung-Chartered Common Platform.
- OutPerform(TM), a comprehensive electrical DFM variability analysis and
optimization solution. OutPerform is also the only silicon validated
complete eDFM product.
About Clear Shape
Clear Shape Technologies, Inc. is focused on delivering a complete Variability Platform that allows designers to control and optimize the parametric and catastrophic impact of systematic manufacturing variations. Clear Shape's products are based on patent-pending technologies enabling designers to efficiently achieve entitled performance and yield. Clear Shape's flagship product InShape is in the DFM qualification program of all the major pure-play foundries and has been silicon-correlated at several IDMs. OutPerform, industry's first eDFM product has also been silicon validated. Clear Shape is backed by top-tier venture investors that include USVP, Intel Capital and KT Ventures (KLA Tencor). The company is headquartered at 3255-3 Scott Blvd, Suite 102 Santa Clara, Calif. 95054.
InShape and OutPerform are trademarks of Clear Shape.
Source: Clear Shape Technologies, Inc.
CONTACT: Gloria Nichols, Launch Marketing, +1-650-851-6919, gloria@launchm.com; or Nitin Deo, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Clear Shape, +1-408-960-1578, nitin@clearshape.com
Web site: http://www.clearshape.com/
