Oasis File Format
gets Endorsed by DFM Startup
SAN
FRANCISCO — Design-for-manufacturing (DFM)
startup Aprio Technologies has given a ringing
endorsement to Oasis, the compact file format
that is slowly emerging as the successor to the
GDSII layout format.
Fellow
startup Oasis Tooling, which provides technology
for Oasis implementation, is expected to
announce next week during the Bacus Photomask
Technology Conference that Aprio (Santa Clara,
Calif.) is the first commercial licensee of
Oasis test cases and tools to assist in the
development and optimization of Oasis database
technology for photomask layout exchange and
interchange. Financial terms of the license
agreement are not being disclosed.
“The Oasis
format resolves many issues hampering the
success of complex ICs, not the least being
protection of process technology information for
the fabs," said Mike Gianfagna,
Aprio president and CEO, in a statement.
"Companies that don’t start implementing the
format now could be out of business in five
years."
It's been
slow going for the implementation of Oasis, or
Open Artwork System Interchange Standard, since
it was
introduced by Semiconductor Equipment and
Materials International (SEMI) as a replacement
for the GDSII file format at Bacus in 2002.
Oasis, which was approved as a standard by SEMI
in 2003, promises a tenfold reduction in design
data compared to GDSII, but is still years away
from becoming the dominant file format.
"It's being
adopted quickly, but it's not really
commercially ready yet," said Tom Grebinski, who
was chairman of the SEMI data path task force
that defined the Oasis standard and is now
president and CEO of
Oasis Tooling (Alamo, Calif.). "It's a major
undertaking to retool to Oasis. It's likely the
largest change taking place in microelectronics,
just because GDSII is everywhere."
Integrated
device manufacturers and foundries are largely
driving Oasis implementation, Grebinski said,
while EDA companies have been moving on Oasis
less quickly, primarily because of the enormous
amount of work involved. Grebinski estimated
that it will be another five years before Oasis
is universally optimized and accepted.
"People
thought that just because Mentor has a tool out
there that outputs to Oasis, that we were done,"
Grebinski said. "But that's not true."
The Calibre
DRC/LVS tool from Mentor Graphics Corp.
(Wilsonville, Ore.)
accepts Oasis files and provides a
GDS-to-Oasis translator. But, Grebinski said,
the Mentor tool is only one step in a long road
Oasis must travel. The next step, he said, will
be tapeout of a chip in native Oasis, rather
than one that has been converted from GDSII.
Hard
intellectual
property (IP),
he said, must also be transitioned from GDSII to
Oasis. And Oasis integration of photomask
preparation tools with photomask pattern
generators is also needed, he said.
Oasis
Tooling has been offering test cases that verify
Oasis variable shape beam (VSB), a dialect of
Oasis, under an unusual "no-charge" license
arrangement since last October. Aprio is the
first company to publicly announce a commercial
licensing arrangement for the company's
technology.
Oasis
Tooling claims to provide the means to build an
optimized Oasis implementation compatible with
all Oasis implementations worldwide. The company
develops Oasis
verification
and acceptance technology for CAD, EDA,
database, 2-D/3-D rendering and simulation, mask
pattern generation and defect detection systems.
