Delivering the Full Benefits of Maskless Lithography and Adaptive Patterning with Comprehensive Design Automation

Producing design files ready for manufacturing involves numerous tools and different workflows which causes several challenges. With many steps and intermediate files, manual approaches to flow management are likely to miss updating a file and don’t scale for many designs. While the EDA industry offers some automated workflows, manual data imports and processing steps are still quite common. Moreover, when designing for Adaptive Patterning with maskless lithography, a full panel or wafer layout is required, not just a single package. Fully digital exposure without a mask offers the incredible ability to quickly adjust designs based on fab results, allowing an iterative and rapid feedback cycle. However, automation beyond traditional EDA is required to truly take advantage of this capability. This paper will explore Deca’s comprehensive design automation system, called AP Studio, that delivers fast, reliable, and unified flows from layout to production ready artifacts. This system interfaces with various EDA layout tools, exports to a standardized format, performs layout post-processing, generates wafer and panel layouts, prepares the layout for Adaptive Patterning, and produces recipe setup data for fab equipment. Once through the flow, the design can be simulated with AP Engine for verification. Unique aspects of the flow will be presented, including how per-wafer OCR and 2D codes and per-package 2D codes can be imaged directly into metal layers. This extensive design automation not only solves longstanding challenges, but also empowers designers with the full benefits of maskless lithography.