CEA-Leti announced that Synopsys has joined the IMAGINE program designed to develop maskless lithography for IC manufacturing. Synopsys is the 10th industrial partner to join IMAGINE. CEA-Leti and MAPPER Lithography launched the program in July 2009 with the delivery of MAPPER’s Massively Parallel Electron Beam Platform to Leti.

The MAPPER platform is the core technology on which the IMAGINE program is built. This program provides the world’s major chip manufacturers with the opportunity to assess maskless lithography technology in a real manufacturing environment. In addition, it will develop and qualify the complete infrastructure, from data preparation to process integration, in preparation for its industrial introduction in 2015.

Leti is an institute of CEA, a French research-and-technology organization with activities in energy, IT, healthcare, defence and security. It specializes in nanotechnologies and their applications, from wireless devices and systems, to biology, healthcare and photonics. NEMS and MEMS are at the core of its activities.

An anchor of the MINATEC campus, CEA-Leti operates 8,000-m² of state-of-the-art clean room space on 200mm and 300mm wafer platforms. It employs 1,400 scientists and engineers and hosts more than 190 Ph.D. students and 200 assignees from partner companies. CEA-Leti owns more than 1,700 patent families.