Global leader cuts design time by two months and de-risks $200M investment

“The Chipworks report settled the internal issues and allowed us to go to market faster than if we had tried to do the work ourselves.”

                                                                                                                         -Engineering Manager

Situation

A multi-billion dollar, high performance telephone handset components manufacturer learned from a Chipworks blog that one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, rumored to be using a superior, but difficult doping technique, was outsourcing its manufacturing. The company had to decide on its technology direction quickly or risk losing market leadership. 

Challenges

• Prove that the world leader had perfected a new doping technique, ending an internal debate around transistor strain engineering in its 65 nm process
• Set the company’s technology direction, avoid manufacturing disasters, and rapidly introduce new devices
   

Chipworks Solution

• Reverse engineered cross sections of a PMOS and of an NMOS transistor for a Structural Analysis Report
• Completed chemical and materials analyses as a benchmark for future processes and reference documents
• Delivered reports that were used in deciding to adopt the new technique during an executive Kaizen meeting
   

Results

• Enabled the client to adapt competitive design concepts and retain market leadership
• De-risked the design and launch of a revolutionary product for less than five percent of its development budget
• Accelerated new product launch by cutting months off the design process
• Delivered cost savings in R&D alone that paid for the investment in Chipworks 25 times over

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