Mask costs have been soaring over the past years, now reaching millions of dollars for the most advanced processes. It is crucial for companies to setup a mask editing flow that is fully automated in order to remove any risk of error and shorten time to manufacturing.

An important step of mask data preparation consists in inserting manufacturing items inside the reticle. This is a tedious and repetitive tasks, which when performed manually can lead to costly errors.

Frame assembly editor

GTframe is a powerful Mask Data Preparation tool, which enables mask data preparation engineers to avoid costly errors and cut time to manufacturing while performing the tedious and error prone tasks of performing reticle assembly by inserting manufacturing items into frames.

GTframe streamlines the generation of complex reticles with automated insertion of manufacturing items between chips or inside scribe lines according to reusable process rules.

GTframe along with GTmuch and its option GTmask provides the first complete and fully integrated Mask Data Preparation flow commercially available. 

Key benefits 

GTframe has been developed to automate the frame assembly process:

Avoid costly errors: automation and design rule checks ensure that the generated frame is manufacturable,
Increase engineering productivity: a complex frame is generated in minutes, and tedious repetitive tasks such as documentation generation are fully automated,
Increase silicon usage: GTframe computes the optimal array as well as the optimal reticle.

Main features

Reusable Constraint File

GTframe inserts manufacturing items into arrays of chips or Multi-Project Wafers (MPWs) or shuttles according to a constraint file provided by the user. Mask data preparation engineers create one constraint file per process and / or customer, and reuse this file for any subsequent project.

Reusable constraint files are human readable descriptions of the items that have to be inserted and of the constraints that must apply to them: absolute or relative positioning, rotation, symmetry, exclusion zones, etc... GTframe even supports an “approximate” constraint defining the range within which an item can be inserted.

Automated Item Placement

GTframe inserts any type of manufacturing items (tests dies, alignment marks, barcodes,...) inside the scribe lines and between the chips of regular arrays of chips or heterogeneous chip assemblies or MPWs. It takes into account all the constraints defined by the user in terms of position, distance between chips and items, geometric transformations. GTframe will place items into any type of frames (O, U, L, or user-specific) and will process hundreds of items in minutes.

Field Optimization

When used for inserting items inside a regular array of chips, GTframe is able to determine the optimum placement leading to the highest number of chips and items. When different reticle sizes are an option to the mask data preparation team, GTframe will compute which reticle will yield the highest number of chips.

Documentation generation

Mask data preparation teams have to generate a detailed documentation targeted for the end users as well as for the manufacturing line. GTframe automates this tedious task. A user-customizable documentation is generated in a matter of seconds that contains information relevant to the recipient and provides information on chips, items, silicon usage, etc... The documentation is available in PDF and Postscript.

User Interface

GTframe offers an intuitive Graphical User Interface to define the reusable constraint file. This file can also be manually generated using a text editor.

GTframe comes with a Graphical User Interface to perform the insertion step. It is also available through the command line making it fully scriptable and enabling automatic processing and easy inclusion in an existing flow.

Performance 

GTframe is able to process hundreds of items (alignment marks, test dies, barcodes, etc.) in minutes.

How does it work 

With GTframe, inserting items is no longer a lengthy process that delay your mask preparation. A single frame description file can be used for each MPW or single GDSII/OASIS file project.

In the case of an array of chips, GTframe can compute for you the optimal array taking in account all your constraints in term of position, priority, distance between chips and items, rotation and symmetry. If you provide different reticle sizes, GTframe will find the best solution.

Supported platforms

SUN Sparc Stations, 32 and 64 bits, Solaris 2.5 and + HP HPUX 11.x x86 PC Linux RedHat 3 and + x86-64 PC Linux RedHat 3 and + ItaniumII Linux RedHat 3 and +