DFM's hot, but what is it?

Based on a recent acquisition and upcoming conferences, design for manufacturing (DFM) is hot. Writing in EDACafe, Atul Sharan, president and CEO at Clear Shape Technologies, comments that "The DFM buzz will be deafening" at the July Design Automation Conference.

Indeed, at DAC, DFM will be the topic of two panel discussions as well as an all-day tutorial. The panel sessions will include "The Fabless Model: Is DFM Our Salvation or Demise?" July 25, and "DFM: Where's the Proof of Value?" July 27. The tutorial, slated for July 28, is titled, "Real DFM Solutions, Tools, Methodologies, and Successes."

In this month's run up to DAC, the financial-services firm Canaccord Adams is holding its Canaccord Adams DFM Conference June 8 in San Francisco. Virage Logic has announced that it's VP and chief scientist, Dr. Yervant Zorian, will participate in a panel titled "Investing in DFM–Where Do We Go From Here?" and in a lunch panel discussion, "How New Test Technologies Fit Into the DFM and Yield Optimization Puzzle."

All the buzz about DFM brings up the question, what exactly is it? The phrase is almost tautological. Until EDA enters the realm of the fine arts, manufacturing will certainly go hand-in-hand with design.

Tools associated with the DFM label range from optical proximity correction to parametric yield measurement and optimization. Perhaps DFM might be best defined as anything you need to design a manufactureble part that's not already included in the design flows from Cadence Design Systems, Magma Design Automation, Mentor Graphics, or Synopsys.

Of course, these four firms are already involved in the DFM space. Cadence recently purchased DFM start-up Praesagus to gain the company’s physics-based interconnect-thickness-variation modeling technology. Magma has debuted Talus and will likely provide more details on that product's DFM and yield-learning capabilities at DAC. Mentor introduced its YieldAssist late last year, and Synopsys offers a variety of DFM and DFY tools.

Nevertheless, there's still room for point-tool suppliers. Click here for a sampler of DFM vendors and a description of the products and technologies they provide. In addition, see this post for links to recent DFM coverage in Test & Measurement World and its sibling publications in the Reed Electronics Group.

Perhaps the best definition of DFM is, the tool you don't already have that you need to rapidly get to volume production at adequate yield levels–and stay there.

Got a DFM definition? Use the comments link or send me e-mail.