July 19, 2006 – Magma Design Automation Inc. and Brion Technologies have formed a partnership to link their technologies in order to create a common modeling environment for lithography. The combined environment, expected to be available in late 2006, will incorporate Brion’s lithography modeling and optical proximity correction (OPC) products and Magma’s physical design and verification system, aiming to provide more accurate and efficient OPC, and less complex and less costly methods of abstracting lithography effects into design flows.

“One unified design environment from two well-known and respected vendors will offer designers and fabs a way to reduce costs, ensure better accuracy and minimize variability,” stated Shauh-Teh Juang, SVP, marketing and business development, at Brion Technologies.

Specifically, the combined environment will incorporate Magma’s Talus, Quartz DRC and Quartz LVS products, and Brion’s Tachyon Focus-Exposure Modeling (FEM), Tachyon Lithography Manufacturability Check (LMC), and Tachyon OPC+ software. Design-critical information will be passed from Blast Fusion to Tachyon-FEM, Tachyon LMC and Tachyon OPC+ to allow the computational lithography flow to optimize runtime and mask cost, while minimizing variability. The design flow will be marketed to chipmakers implementing 65nm, 45nm, and 32nm process nodes, or those developing lithography-based DFM flows, the companies said.

Specific benefits proposed include reduced timing variability, decreased leakage power variability, fewer lithography hot spots prior to tape-out, no multiple models and inaccurate abstract models, and one model for physical design, physical verification, OPC and OPC verification.

“Our corporate visions are well aligned and our joint goals aggressive because the market is moving quickly to smaller process nodes,” stated John Lee, GM of Magma’s physical verification business unit. “With this partnership, both companies are ready to meet the demands of today’s designers.”