Services to Ensure Your Success

Mentor Consulting: Optimal Performance

Achieving Optimal Performance

Achieving fast turnaround time (TAT) in the GDS-to mask flow is essential for competitiveness and profitability. Fast TAT enables faster time to market, higher customer satisfaction, higher market share and better fab utilization. Our consultants provide the expertise and project management skills required to complete critical tasks. YES consultants work with you to identify the bottlenecks, define and prioritize opportunities, and deliver the improvements needed to accomplish your goals.

These may include the optimization of physical verification rule files, migration to the latest releases of Calibre to take full advantage of new capabilities, and optimizing OPC models and recipes for speed and accuracy. By taking full advantage of Mentor Consulting services and the capabilities of the Calibre platform, customers have reduced TAT by more than 50% while maintaining accuracy and reliability.

Mentor Consulting:On-Time Technology

Assuring On-Time Technology

On-time technology has long been recognized in the semiconductor industry as critical to success. Mentor Consulting provides creative solutions to accelerate development of physical verification rule decks, OPC models and recipes, and process design kits. These solutions include building automated methodologies for rule deck and OPC development, and QA, as well as providing expert resources to meet peak demands.

YES consultants have successfully implemented automated flows for physical verification and OPC development. This has substantially reduced engineering cycle time and increased productivity so that decks and OPC solutions can be released faster, at highest quality standards, and at a lower cost.

Mentor Consulting:Lower TCO

Lower Cost of Ownership

Mentor Consulting enables low cost of ownership by providing efficient, automated methodologies and expert resources that reduce engineering cycle time and increase productivity. Solutions are delivered faster and at lower cost. Many customers have reduced permanent staff and fixed costs by relying on YES consultants to meet peak demands or to meet requirements for specialized expertise.

Mentor Consulting:Accelerating the Learning Curve

Accelerating the Learning Curve

YES consultants not only provide hands-on creative solutions for design and manufacturing challenges, they ensure the teams they work with also learn the technologies, best practices and methodologies used during the consulting engagement. Knowledge transfer and an accelerated learning curve help engineering teams continue to meet business objectives.

Mentor Consulting:Experts in GDS to Mask

Experts in the GDS to Mask Flow

Mentor Consulting provides the expertise and project management skills required for effective deployment of solutions for the Calibre® platform from Mentor Graphics. This includes:

• Calibre® DRC^TM, LVS and xRC^TM for physical verification and extraction technologies
• Calibre YieldAnalyzer, YieldEnhancer, YieldServer and LFD^TM (litho-friendly design) for design for manufacturing solutions
• Calibre OPC, Calibre nmOPC, Calibre OPCverify^TM, and Calibre MDP for resolution enhancement technologies (RET) and mask data preparation
• Yield Assist™ for advanced yield diagnostics Mentor Consulting is fully aligned with product roadmaps to deliver complete and effective integration of advanced technologies into existing design and manufacturing environments.

Mentor Consulting:Case Study

Case Study: Fast GDSII-to-Mask Turnaround Time (TAT)

For a leading IDM, tapeout turn around time (TAT) for performing resolution enhancement technology (RET) was increasing with each new advanced process node. Long tapeout times were impacting time-to-market and an ability to compete in the marketplace. TAT was also unpredictable with some layers taking >4 times the average TAT to complete.

The customer goals were to reduce average RET TAT by at least 50% for all mask layers and eliminate the problem of unpredictable TAT. In addition, they wanted to optimize hardware utilization. Their main obstacles to achieving these goals were lack of expert resources and proven methodology to accomplish these improvements and assure consistent yield from the optimized solutions.

Mentor Consulting structured the engagement with a systematic approach: Calibre® RET tools release migration, recipe optimization, hardware configuration and sign-off, all performed within an ongoing verification and validation process.

Results exceeded expectations. Average TAT was reduced by 50 to 70 percent. Long RET runs were eliminated. All performance targets were met. The project was completed on time, and the customer was highly satisfied.