SUNNYVALE, Calif., 22 Feb. 2007. Management at Blaze DFM, provider of software solutions to fabless semiconductor companies, has signed a letter of intent to merge with Aprio Technologies, a technology company providing design for manufacturability (DFM) solutions to the semiconductor industry.
The company plans to integrate Aprio's analysis and simulation engines into the Blaze product line to offer the industry a comprehensive electrical DFM solution.
Financial terms of the agreement were not announced. The merger is expected to be finalized within the next few weeks.
The merged company will retain the name Blaze DFM Inc. and will be headquartered at Blaze's current location in Sunnyvale, Calif. The company will retain Aprio's international offices in Japan and Taiwan. Blaze also has an office in San Diego, Calif.
Aprio's litho simulation engine is unique in that it is accurate and very fast due to its ability to work incrementally. Some commercially available litho simulation engines work with abstracted data, and are therefore not accurate enough for electrical DFM purposes. Others are highly accurate but are too slow to be used during the design process. Aprio's engine is both accurate enough and fast enough to meet the needs of a comprehensive electrical DFM solution.
The combination of Aprio's analysis and simulation technology together with Blaze's electrical analysis and optimization capabilities provide chip designers with the ability to model, predict, and compensate for systematic variations in advanced silicon process technologies. The result is tighter control over process variation and dramatic improvements in parametric yield and time to volume production. This also lays the ground work for enablement of statistical analysis and optimization tools in the future.
