Setting up the technology infra-structure for CAD systems

This paper discusses the link between the fabrication process and the CAD system. This link is often taken for granted and little (if any) attention is paid to the effort needed to correctly embed a new process description into a CAD system. Not only the effort needed to install a new process is an important part of the set-up of a CAD system, also the calibration of the different tools that use the process information. The gravity of this problem will become even more pronounced in the oncoming years when CAD users are more and more embracing a mix-and-match point tool solution to build their design flow. Here the users have to deal with multiple representations of the same process within similar tools and are forced to evaluate the consistency of the behaviour of these tools and decide on the operational characteristics of each of these tools to come to a design flow that will produce consistent results