It is being delivered by a partnership of: semiconductor IP source Semiwise, industry body TechWorks and NMI (National Microelectronics Institute), plus Pragmatic Semiconductor as a consultant.
“In the UK, we have numerous small to medium sized specialist chip companies looking to expand their operations,” said TechWorks CEO Charles Sturman. “VRSFT will enable these companies to train staff at any time, without operational disruption and at low cost. TechWorks is excited to be supporting this activity through our NMI Network.”
“The project addresses the acute training needs of the semiconductor industry fuelled by the US and EU Chips Acts, the UK’s Semiconductor Programme and similar investments all over the world – by 2030 more than one million new semiconductor experts will be needed,” according to Semiwise. “By leveraging virtual reality and augmented reality, the project provides an immersive virtual reality model of a modern fabrication facility, allowing trainees to interact with realistic representations of fabrication equipment and to learn about semiconductor manufacturing.”
VRSFT will model a set of CMOS manufacturing equipment, generic as well as from specific manufactures, in a clean room whose layout can be changed to meet particular training needs.
“Opposite to the typical walk-through-a-clean-room educational videos, it has deep educational content at equipment, product fabrication, working practice and behaviour levels,” said Semiwise CEO Asen Asenov. “It is enhanced by the use of Synopsys TCAD tools showing the outcome of each stage of the semiconductor fabrication process.”
Asenov was the founder of Gold Standard Simulations (GSS), a 2010 University of Glasgow start-up built around a CAD-based ‘design-technology co-optimisation’ tool chain. Synopsis bought GSS in 2016 and now offers that tool as what it calls ‘TCAD-to-Spice’ flow – and continues to develop it in Glasgow.
