The primary objective of the HYMNE project is to develop methods, software and hardware that will permit the European IC manufacturing industry to enhance production cycle time and device yield and hence to significantly gain in competitiveness in advanced technology manufacture.

The ambition of the project consortium is to demonstrate that for latest generation (< 65 nm) complex CMOS technology it will be possible to shorten development cycles and to obtain a device yield better than 80% within 12 months after ‘first silicon out’ and also that by intelligent Fab re-thinking, the cycle time can be reduced from 2 to 1.0 days per mask layer for standard lots and from 0.75 to 0.35 for fast prototyping in a running 300-mm wafer fab.

The consortium includes main European device manufacturers (ST, NXP, Atmel), suppliers of source materials (Air Liquide), suppliers of equipment, auxiliary hardware and software and of facilities to the semiconductors industry (FEI, SEZ, SIAutomation,..) and renowned European institutes and laboratories (LETI, Universities in NL and F).