Design for manufacturability for fabless manufactuers

When a company designs and sells ICs but outsources their manufacture, design for manufacturability poses special challenges. It is clear that these DfM solutions are very complex and require a series of fundamental new physical models and design practices. Practical deployment of DfM solutions requires development of an entire incremental infrastructure on both the process and design sides of the technology integration spectrum. Optimizing the various DfM methods involves complex, multi-faceted tradeoffs that are ultimately dependent on target technology and various product attributes. DfM is definitely not a one-size-fits-all panacea for all of the process manufacturability and variability challenges. Complete and successful DfM deployment is a true ecosystem that requires multiple tools using multiple models, potentially calibrated to multiple levels of accuracy, inserted at multiple points in the design flow.