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We are studying the manufacturing performance of semiconductor wafer fabrication plants in the US, Asia, and Europe. There are great similarities in production equipment, manufacturing processes, and products produced at these plants. Nevertheless, data reported here show that important quantitative measures of productivity vary by factors of 3 to as much as 5 across an international sample of 16 plants.
We conducted on-site interviews with manufacturing personnel to better understand reasons for the observed wide variations in productivity. We have identified factors in the areas of information systems, organizational practices, process and technology improvements, and production control that correlate strongly with productivity.
Interest in integrating the design and manufacture of semiconductor devices has been growing over the past decade. Often referred to as design for manufacture (DFM), integrated product development seeks to conceive and refine design alternatives that make the best use of manufacturing capabilities, in terms of the various materials, processes, tools, equipment, and facilities available realize the design. While there is a large and growing literature on DFM generally, comparatively little of the published work addresses design for semiconductor manufacturing (DFSM) specifically, or the unique technologies and special circumstances of the semiconductor industry.
In this paper, we present the results of a DFSM literature and software survey undertaken during the period June 1995 through August 1996. We describe the methods and sources used in the survey and include the complete abstracts of 61 articles determined to be most significant for DFSM. Also included is listing and brief description of some related software packages, which are available commercially or by anonymous ftp from a number of World Wide sites.
Index Terms--Design automation, design for manufacturability (DFM), ECAD, modeling, semiconductor manufacturing, simulation, TCAD.
The semiconductor industry is challenged to sustain the historical rate of exponential growth in product innovation and productivity for as long into the future as possible. If this challenge is to be met, substantial investments in chip-design automation are required to improve design capabilities and to narrow the widening gap between projected increases in device complexity and design productivity. Design for manufacture (DFM) is one potential means to leverage the required investment in design automation. DFM focuses on understanding how the design of a product interacts with the various processes and facilities available to make that product, in order to conceive and refine design alternatives that tend to optimize the product in the context of existing or project manufacturing capabilities. In this paper, we review the current literature on DFM as applied in other industries and consider the relevance of state-of-the-art DFM principles and tools to improved efficiency and productivity within the semiconductor industry. We observe that, overall, many of the organizational structures for implementing DFM already exist within semiconductor firms and the industry more broadly. Moreover, much of the existing spectrum of layout, modeling, simulation, and analysis tools used for semiconductor device, process, equipment, and factory design can be thought of as components of a de facto system of design for semiconductor manufacturing (DFSM). While recent work aimed specifically at DFSM shows great promise, advances in the development of component design tools are lagging and integration of these tools into a coherent system for DFSM is only emerging. Systems integration of tools which characterize future processes and technologies will be needed in order to posit design rules which are sufficiently robust to allow their incorporation in industry-standard automated design and layout tools. The implications are that there is a need for accelerated improvements in DFSM tools and integration if historical semiconductor productivity growth is to be sustained.
Index Terms--Design automation, design for manufacturability (DFM), ECAD, modeling, semiconductor manufacturing, simulation, TCAD.
A wide-ranging study of the technological capability of the mainland China electronics industry has been conducted. The study reveals that the Chinese industry is driven to improve technologically mainly by foreign technology transfer, though local process innovation has been observed that can improve the output of foreign process technology. Surface mount manufacturing technology is common in China, and can be near state-of-the-art. Integrated circuit (IC) technology lags world trends by more than five years. The rate of improvement in technology and output of the mainland China electronics industry suggests that mainland China is likely to rival South Korea, Taiwan, and even Japan as a major Asian force in the world industry in the twenty-first century.
Index Terms--China electronics industry, foreign investment, technology transfer.
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