A recent statistic from a well known design tool vendor showed that only 14% of new IC layouts were error free at 1st tape out. Hardly “right first time”.
Verification and modelling will only take you so far, especially for ASIC and Analog designs. High metal layer count, shrinking geometries, packaging developments and thermal issues aren’t helping either.
BUT there is a tried and tested way of fixing 1st Silicon in just a few hours.
It’s called FIB IC Nano-Surgery (historically called FIB Circuit Edit).
For those unfamiliar with the technique, it uses a Focused Ion Beam microscope to physically cut and connect buried tracks on a fabricated IC, correcting layout errors in hours, and allowing you to test and verify a mask change BEFORE tape out.
From a business perspective this effectively removes all the risk from such an expensive and time costly decision (new Silicon can take 3 months or more) at a time when a project delivery is at it’s most critical. Who wouldn’t choose to have working Silicon immediately for customer demos, chip, board and system level debug, and project support and investor confidence?
HERES the danger – it used to be easy, but now it’s not.
A decade ago anyone with a FIB or DualBeam in their lab could implement fixes with a high degree of confidence – but those days are long gone.
Devices and packaging got more complex, and the FIB instruments themselves have evolved away from being optimised for Nano-Surgery as an application.
So FIB Nano-Surgery has had to evolve, and the people doing it have had to become more specialised. Now you can’t even start without having an expert in this application, the right equipment, and a carefully created strategy.
This requires dedicated capabilities to open the package, protection for the circuit before surgery, target node access in high yielding locations, fix implementation within the tolerance of the device, cleaning and handling protocols, and protection during test.
Your FIB surgeon now needs extensive application experience and a knowledge of Microscopy Physics, Semiconductor construction, gas chemistry/ion beam interaction, gas flux geometry, electrical engineering/ circuit charge management and electronic testing-for every intervention.
Many designers have been disappointed because they tried this (maybe at a University, or an FA or Test lab), failed, and received NO EXPLANATION why, and have given up on the technique.
There are very few places left that still achieve high yields first time for these complex interventions, but the rewards for getting it right have never been higher.
We can tell you how to maximise your fix yield, what that yield will be, the costs, and the time needed BEFORE you choose Nano-Surgery to fix your layout problem.
There’s a reason we call it “Your 1st Silicon Emergency Service”.
Recent Comments