Yesterday I gave a brief overview of lithography and the need for DFM tools to calculate and verify what needs to go on the mask so that we end up with what we want on the die.
The need to continue using 193nm light at the 90nm technology node created a discontinuity. Ad hoc approaches would not longer be enough. Venture capitalists realized this was an opportunity, and also a number of manufacturing companies that had some relevant software internally They created about thirty EDA companies in the early 2000s. There were also some existing companies that moved to bring products to market in the space.
In a cohort of companies founded to address a problem, there is a winner-take-all dynamic. This is true of most industries, not just EDA. Most of the profit goes to the #1 player, some goes to the #2 player and #3 on down pretty much either break even or lose money. For startups, the #1 player is acquired for a lot of money, #2 for a reasonable sum, and everyone else become what VCs optimistically call a technology sale, meaning they’ll take whatever they can get to get it off their hands.
The earliest company into the space was OPC solutions, which was probably too early. Mentor acquired it in 1998 and used as a starting point for its DFM solutions in Calibre, which is still the market leader in OPC. Then Numerical Technologies, which Synopsys acquired in 2003.
If we look at the next generation, the companies fall into three main groups.
Firstly, mask analysis: examining the polygons on the mask and checking whether they were matched what was meant to be there. This was mainly the province of the equipment vendors (plus Brion): KLA, AMAT, Brion, ASML and Nikon.
Next were the simulation companies. They would analyze the mask, work out the effect of all the wave interference of light in the stepper optics, simulate the lithography and work out what would end up on the wafer. This could then be used to check that it was close enough to the original layout, or to adjust timing or to search for hot spots, areas of the wafer where manufacturing problems (such as bridging of one piece of metal to another) were too statistically likely. Brion, Clearshape, ASML and Mentor all had products here.
Finally, optimization, working out the impact of the RET decoration and making changes to it to improve manufacturing yield. ClearShape and Blaze played here.
But there were dozens of other companies. Process optimization with HPL Technology, IC Scope, ISE, PAL, PDF solutions, Sigma-C, Silvaco, Stone Pillar, Syntricity. Preventing catastrophic failures and increasing yields were Anchor, CMP, Bindkey, ESCad, Prediction software, ChipMD, Invarium, , Ubitech and Xyalis. Hot spot tools and critical area identification came from Ponte, Mentor, Cadence, Synopsys. Mask optimization produced another group consisting of Aprio, ASML masktools, Blaze, Brion, K2, Clearshape, Fortis, IC Scope, Magma/Mojave, Takumi and, of course, Mentor’s Calibre. Phew, that’s a lot of companies and I’m sure I’ve probably missed some too.
You will notice that most of these companies are no longer around. Actually they are around, just not independent. The big successes among the startups were Brion, which was acquired by ASML (a lithographic equipment company) for about $270M and Clearshape (acquired by Cadence for around $50M). K2 was also acquired by Cadence for an undisclosed, supposedly not large, sum.
Mentor’s Calibre is probably still the market leader in OPC. Next are Synopsys’s DFM tools which originally came from TMA (via Avant!) and Numerical Technologies. Cadence, despite a few acquisitions, are an also-ran. PDF solutions still exists (it is a public company). Blaze (which had already absorbed Aprio) existed as late as last November and its assets will show up somewhere soon. Takumi still exists, mostly doing business in Japan. Anchor still exists, with Xillinx among others as a customer. The rest are mostly gone or, in some cases, reabsorbed back into the parent that they were optimistically spun out of.
So what is the moral of the story. As usual, one conclusion is the venture capitalists make sheep look like independent thinkers. Every VC that invested in EDA wanted to have a play in the DFM space.
Another observation is that the technology was tricky: optics is not a normal part of EDA. The business models were trickier: did you sell to design groups, the manufacturing groups in fabless companies, the foundries themselves or the mask houses? How statistical (manufacturing) versus pass/fail (design) did you make things? Did you get a royalty of some sort or just license fees?