UMC and Cadence Collaborate on 3D-IC Hybrid Bonding Reference Flow

HSINCHU, Taiwan & SAN JOSE, Calif. -- February 1, 2023 — United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC; TWSE: 2303) (“UMC”), a leading global semiconductor foundry, and Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CDNS) today announced that the Cadence^® 3D-IC reference flow, featuring the Integrity^Ô 3D-IC Platform, has been certified for UMC’s chip stacking technologies, enabling faster time to market.

UMC’s hybrid bonding solutions are now ready to support the integration across a broad range of technology nodes that are suitable for edge AI, image processing, and wireless communication applications. Using UMC’s 40nm low power (40LP) process as a wafer-on-wafer stacking demonstration, the two companies collaborated to validate key 3D-IC features in this design flow, including system planning and intelligent bump creation with Cadence’s Integrity 3D-IC platform, the industry’s first comprehensive solution that integrates system planning, chip and packaging implementation, and system analysis in a single platform.

“Interest in 3D-IC solutions has increased notably in the past year as our customers seek ways to boost design performance without sacrificing area or cost,” said Osbert Cheng, vice president of device technology development & design support at UMC. “Cost-effectiveness and design reliability are the pillars of UMC’s hybrid bonding technologies, and this collaboration with Cadence provides mutual customers with both, helping them reap the benefits of 3D structures while also accelerating the time needed to complete their integrated designs.”

"With increasing design complexity for IoT, AI, and 5G applications, wafer-on-wafer technology automation is increasingly important for chip designers,” said Don Chan, vice president, R&D in the Digital & Signoff Group at Cadence. “The Cadence 3D-IC flow with the Integrity 3D-IC platform is optimized for use on UMC’s hybrid bonding technologies, providing customers with a comprehensive design, verification and implementation solution that enables them to create and verify innovative 3D-IC designs with confidence while accelerating time to market.”

The reference flow, featuring Cadence’s Integrity 3D-IC Platform, is built around a high-capacity, multi-technology hierarchical database. The platform offers design planning, implementation and analysis of full 3D designs within a single, unified cockpit. Multiple chiplets in a 3D stack can be designed and analyzed together through integrated early analysis for thermal, power and static timing analysis. The reference flow also enables system-level layout versus schematic (LVS) checking to connectivity accuracy, electric rule-checking (ERC) for coverage and alignment checking, and thermal analysis for heat distribution in a 3D stacked-die design structure.

In addition to the Integrity 3D-IC platform, the Cadence 3D-IC flow also includes the Innovus^™ Implementation System, Quantus^™ Extraction Solution, Tempus^™ Timing Signoff Solution, Pegasus^™ Verification System, Voltus^™ IC Power Integrity Solution and Celsius^™ Thermal Solver for system analysis. For more information, please visit www.cadence.com/go/integrityflowpr.

About UMC

UMC (NYSE: UMC, TWSE: 2303) is a leading global semiconductor foundry company. The company provides high quality IC fabrication services, focusing on logic and various specialty technologies to serve all major sectors of the electronics industry. UMC’s comprehensive IC processing technologies and manufacturing solutions include Logic/Mixed-Signal, embedded High-Voltage, embedded Non-Volatile-Memory, RFSOI and BCD etc. Most of UMC's 12-in & 8-in fabs with its core R&D are located in Taiwan, with additional ones throughout Asia. UMC has total 12 fabs in production with combined capacity over 850,000 wafers per month (8-in equivalent), and all of them are certified with IATF 16949 automotive quality standard. UMC is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, plus local offices in United States, Europe, China, Japan, Korea & Singapore, with worldwide total 20,000 employees. For more information, please visit: http://www.umc.com.

About Cadence

Cadence is a pivotal leader in electronic systems design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. The company applies its underlying Intelligent System Design strategy to deliver software, hardware and IP that turn design concepts into reality. Cadence customers are the world’s most innovative companies, delivering extraordinary electronic products from chips to boards to complete systems for the most dynamic market applications, including hyperscale computing, 5G communications, automotive, mobile, aerospace, consumer, industrial and healthcare. For eight years in a row, Fortune magazine has named Cadence one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Learn more at cadence.com.