UMC Announces 14nm certification on Mentor's Calibre Eco Fill Flow

Hsinchu, Taiwan, February 03, 2020 – United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC; TWSE: 2303) ("UMC"), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that the company has certified its 14nm process on the Calibre™ Eco Fill tape-out flow utility from Mentor, a Siemens business. The flow utilizes Mentor’s Calibre™ nmDRC platform, Calibre™ YieldEnhancer and Calibre™ DESIGNrev tools, and includes:

ECO layout comparison: compare the differences between the original design layout after engineering design changes.
Conflict dummy shape removal: filter out conflicting dummy patterns based on differences in engineering design changes.
Dummy refill: uses the same UMC provided deck and SmartFill functionality that is part of the Calibre YieldEnhancer product to fill areas where the design layout changed.

Erwin Deng, deputy division director of Mask Engineering and Service division at UMC, said, “Integrating the Calibre Eco Fill flow into the design-in stage for UMC's 14nm process technology can help our customers accelerate their time-to-production and expedite their new 14nm products to market. This solution is the latest extension of our long history of successful collaboration with Mentor.”

The Calibre Eco Fill process flow uses UMC's 14nm FinFET Compact Process dummy fill design rule that also supports dummy fill when the design layout changes. For customers developing 14nm applications such as crypto currency, 5G mmWave, Baseband (3G/4G/5G) and CPU/GPU, Calibre Eco Fill can minimize timing impact to last minute design changes so that tape-out schedules are not compromised, while also helping provide a more complete dummy fill solution to assist customers in making chip design changes more efficiently.

UMC's 14nm process is based on the company’s self-developed 14nm FinFET technology. The technology includes advancements such as Fin module, High-k/Metal Gate stack, low-k spacer, strain engineering, MEOL (mid end of line) as well as BEOL (back end of line) modules. The process technology is ideal for applications that require high performance and low power consumption within the same design.

About UMC

UMC (NYSE: UMC, TWSE: 2303) is a leading global semiconductor foundry. The company provides mature and advanced IC production with a focus on Specialty Technologies to serve applications spanning every major sector of the electronics industry. UMC’s comprehensive foundry solutions enable chip designers to leverage the company’s sophisticated technology and manufacturing, which include high volume 28nm High-K/Metal Gate technology, volume production 14nm FinFET, specialty process platforms specifically developed for AIoT and 5G applications and the automotive industry’s highest-rated AEC-Q100 Grade-0 manufacturing capabilities for the production of ICs found in vehicles. UMC’s 12 wafer fabs are strategically located throughout Asia and are able to produce more than 700,000 wafers per month. The company employs approximately 19,500 people worldwide, with offices in Taiwan, China, Europe, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United States. UMC can be found on the web at http://www.umc.com.