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Micron’s strategic investment in Silvaco: accelerating Advanced Modeling-based solutions and innovations

Manish Tangri, Dr. Gurtej Sandhu | April 2024

As a global semiconductor company, Micron is uniquely positioned to bring strategic value to companies through Micron Ventures investments in a variety of ways:

  • R&D support — help build a next-gen business
  • Productization — grow with our industry experts
  • Collaborative market entry — access to our ecosystem

A great example is Micron’s recent $5M convertible note investment in Silvaco, a provider of technology computer aided design software, electronic design automation software and semiconductor intellectual property, or TCAD, EDA and SIP, respectively.

Silvaco is combining their expertise in semiconductor technologies with machine learning and data analysis to develop an artificial intelligence-based solution named Fab Technology Co-Optimization, or FTCO™, for wafer-level fabrication facilities. FTCO enables customers to use their manufacturing data to perform statistical and physics-based machine learning software simulations to create a computer model or “digital twin” of a wafer that can be used to simulate the fabrication process. As a virtual representation of the manufacturing process and the wafer, this “digital twin” then serves as a platform through which a customer can run experiments and tests to understand the impact on the yield of a wafer due to variations in the parameters of the manufacturing process, predict the yield for further research on new products, and reduce the time to market for products, all without the need to run physical wafers, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

Silvaco’s advanced modeling solutions are enabling us to accelerate our groundbreaking advancements in memory and storage. Our ability to add strategic value to Silvaco is what makes this a great investment for both companies.

Sr Fellow, Technology Pathfinding

Gurtej Sandhu

Gurtej Sandhu is Senior Fellow and Director at Micron Technology. In his current role, he is responsible for Micron’s end-to-end (Si-to-Package) R&D technology roadmaps. The scope includes driving cross-functional alignment across various departments, managing engineering groups to resource and execute on critical technology projects, as well as managing interactions with research partners and consortia around the world.