Homegrown Tools and Equipment versus EDA and ATE Vendors: The Future of Design to Test Product Lines

Tight integration of EDA tools and design methodologies with fabrication equipment and manufacturing processes is a key success factor for leading-edge semiconductor technology companies. In particular, the ownership of methodologies and processes to a large extent controls how well new technologies can be rolled out and ramped up to production. Ownership of test-related design, manufacturing, and engineering software systems enables superior ability to quickly adopt relatively generic equipment hardware platforms to the rapidly changing technology requirements. Keeping the core software systems development in-house makes it easier to deliver and deploy the right tools and methodologies for industry-leading technology innovations, like copper interconnect or SOI, before those technologies become commonplace. A good example of the strength of in-house synergy between tool and methodology development is the highly automated vectorless sign-off flow for IBM's ASICs.