Mentor Graphics, GLOBALFOUNDRIES partner to improve yield analysis, combine Tessent and Calibre capabilities

Posted by Courtney E. Howard

WILSONVILLE, Ore., 10 Sept. 2011. Mentor Graphics Corp. (NASDAQ:MENT) has announced a new approach to IC yield analysis that combines the layout-aware production test failure diagnosis capabilities of the Tessent Diagnosis and Tessent YieldInsight products with the design for manufacturing (DFM) analysis facilities of the CalibreYieldAnalyzer tool. Customers can identify systematic yield loss, and determine whether the systematic yield loss is correlated to DFM violations.

“Diagnosis-driven yield analysis is an established yield-learning methodology at GLOBALFOUNDRIES for internal technology development, as well as for accelerating the yield ramp for our customer products,” explains Thomas Herrmann, MTS product engineer, GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “The addition of DFM-aware yield analysis helps us and our customers to separate design- and process-related yield limiters, and reduces the time to find the root causes of yield loss. We can also use the technology to optimize DFM rules to address specific customer needs and priorities, which leads to reduced manufacturing variability for re-spins and future designs.”

In the DFM-aware yield analysis flow, test data from digital semiconductor devices that have failed manufacturing test is used to perform layout-aware failure diagnosis with the Tessent Diagnosis product, which provides information such as defect classifications and suspected defect locations. The Calibre YieldAnalyzer product uses GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ Manufacturing Analysis and Scoring (MAS) deck to identify features of the layout that have higher sensitivities to manufacturing variability. The Tessent YieldInsight product analyzes this information to identify and understand systematic yield loss, and determine whether this yield loss is associated with known DFM-sensitive layout structures.

“Mentor continues to drive towards meaningful interactions between the design and manufacturing test flows,” says Greg Aldrich, marketing director for the Silicon Test Solutions group at Mentor Graphics. “This is much more than allowing tools to exchange data—it’s incorporating powerful data mining and statistical analysis capabilities that leverage the knowledge and experience of experts from both the design and manufacturing areas.”