Takumi Technology Corporation today announced the availability of its new layout optimization tool -- Takumi Enhance-RO for automated enforcement of recommended rules and critical area optimization. With Takumi Enhance-RO, Takumi's layout optimization suite now offers complete solutions to address issues that affect parametric yield as well as eliminating catastrophic defects.

Recommended design rules, sometimes referred to as DFM rules or preferred rules, are increasingly used by foundries to manage yield ramp for advanced process nodes. Each of these recommended rules are designed to address specific yield loss conditions encountered during process ramp-up. The number of these rules also increases rapidly with each new process node. Manual enforcement is extremely difficult as often these rules contradict or fight with each other. The relative priority of each rule is design-dependent. For example, in the case of data-path, control logic, and embedded memory macros, it is very likely that a single rule may take on different priorities.

With a fixed cell area and tight performance constraints, enforcing recommended rules on any layout is a challenge. With space constraints, enforcement of recommended rules by objectively trading-off the relative impact on silicon quality is practically impossible. This process is no longer a geometric manipulation of layout dimensions. It is an optimization process involving quantitative trade-off analyses where automation is the only viable option.

"Implementing recommended design rules is a fundamental step in managing yield and quality of advanced designs at 65nm and 45nm," said Mr. Akifumi Goto, President and CEO of Takumi Technology. "Takumi Enhance-RO gives the user unprecedented productivity gains by fully automating the recommended rule enforcement process and benefiting from the foundry's learning curve in yield enhancement."

Takumi Enhance-RO, with its built-in cost analysis and dynamic trade-off analysis, allows a user to enforce all applicable recommended rules, by objectively trading-off against cost. This ensures a high quality layout.

About Takumi Technology Corporation

Takumi Technology Corporation (Takumi) is the leader in providing design- for-manufacturing (DFM) system solutions based on its unique criticality aware concept. Takumi's customers are major semiconductor manufacturers, capital equipment makers and photomask providers. Takumi's software products include Takumi Enhance-RO(TM) -- an automated recommended rule enforcement and CAA optimization tool, Takumi Enhance-LO(TM) -- an automated model-based layout optimization tool; Takumi HSF(TM) -- a full-chip lithography-hotspot removing tool; and Takumi D3A(TM) -- an automated mask defect analysis and judgment tool. Takumi Technology B.V. (in The Netherlands) and Takumi Technology KK (in Japan) are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Takumi Technology Corporation.