Syntricity: Total recall
Syntricity's Web-based tools help IC companies manage-and leverage-enormous caches of engineering data.
by Terrence Lynch -- Movers and Shakers, 8/15/2003
E-TAIL HAS GONE BUST, and email is a mixed blessing, but that doesn't mean that the Web is going to go the way of the CB radio. In fact, much like CB, the Web may become a tool used primarily by professionals. If so, we'll have companies like Syntricity to thank.
The company was started in 1997 by a group of experienced IC manufacturing and software engineers who had witnessed the explosion of engineering data and the increasing difficulty manufacturers had in using it efficiently. Time-to-market pressures, coupled with the often planetwide dispersal of designers, foundries, and management, were hobbling innovation and creating waste.
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| Jeff Teza, Chairman, President, and CEO, Syntricity |
The answer to the problem was, as it seemed for everything in the late 1990s, the Web. But the company wasn't just jumping on a bandwagon. It had a yield-management software product, dataConductor, that allowed engineers to capture and analyze data from diverse sources: EDA (electronic design automation) tools, work-in process (WIP) accounting software, and other manufacturing engineering system (MES) software. The company also had a professional services consulting business, offering the expertise of its electronics manufacturing and software staff as consultants. Clearly, the Web offered a flexible outlet for what the company had to sell.
Sales of dataConductor were Web-based from the start, but many potential clients, startups and fabless companies especially, lacked the IT staffs and expertise to be comfortable with it. Instead, they asked Syntricity to host the software, that is, to manage and maintain it and make it available online. The request became the kernel of an idea.
Under the dataConductor.com name, Syntricity sold subscriptions to the software, which customer personnel in far-flung facilities could access as needed over the Web. Syntricity kept the software current and provided a secure system with log-on monitoring and intrusion-protection features that guaranteed the security of the customer data it held.
Web-based dataConductor.com is still in operation, but in late 2002, Syntricity unveiled dataConductorEP (extensible platform), which the company calls "the new standard."
With dataConductorEP, the company re-wrote the dataConductor software into an open platform based upon a Java application server and Oracle 9i. "This investment makes us the only company with a modern engineering data-management, analysis, and reporting platform truly capable of supporting a large enterprise," says Jeff Teza, Syntricity's chairman, president, and CEO. "All alternatives I am aware of use the word 'enterprise' but are really old client/server C programs that are really engineering workstations."
As open, Web-native software, dataConductorEP offers users distinct advantages over client/server alternatives for yield management.
Open refers to the standard technologies on which dataConductorEP is based--XML (extensible markup language), Python, and Java (J2SE). With these tools, the software can be easily customized to fit the user's needs. Moreover, says Teza, "Going forward, we will be able to leverage best-in-class software from the industry without being limited by our ability to develop and control all the elements of the system."
| "I think that dataConductorEP is creating a new category of software that will be as fundamental to successful semiconductor companies as EDA tools became during the late 1970s and early 1980s.” Jeff Teza, Chairman, President, and CEO, Syntricity |
Being Web-native means that users interact with the software through a familiar interface--a Web browser. As with the dot-com version, it also means that users are spared in-house IT and data-storage expenses. But more importantly, it means that designers, manufacturing personnel, and all members of the manufacturing supply chain can share data and work collaboratively.
Collaboration, Syntricity says, is the key to speeding up the validation process, the move to mass production, and maintenance of high production yields. The dataConductorEP software includes an application called reportConductor, which lets users define access levels, then generate standard or custom reports from collected data and share them appropriately with colleagues around the world at the click of a mouse. They can also package selected stored data into "e-binders" and send them as secure email messages for comment or analysis. Reports and emails can be annotated, ensuring that best practices are shared quickly throughout the community.
The suite of applications available with dataConductorEP includes standard statistical-analysis tools and, through Python scripting, custom tools that users design. It also includes dataset formation tools that let users merge data from a variety of sources: simulation and GDS II graphical-design data; equipment status, metrology, and WAT and PCM foundry-data files; ATE results, device-characterization test results; and logistical data like material genealogy, work-in-process, and other manufacturing engineering system data.
The interface lets users send data to storage easily, or arrange for automatic data storage. Again through Python scripting, users can set alarm levels for a particular data type and script the system's actions in the event those alarm levels are reached. If an alarm is triggered, dataConductorEP can quickly perform a "first pass" root-cause analysis, greatly accelerating production-line recovery.
Rollout of the product to more than 35 customers took place in July 2003. "I think that dataConductorEP is creating a new category of software that will be as fundamental to successful semiconductor companies as EDA tools became during the late 1970s and early 1980s," Teza says.
Although no figures concerning privately held Syntricity are available, the company has been affected by the downturn. "After 25 years in the semiconductor industry, I have never witnessed a contraction as severe as this," Teza says. "Syntricity was able to weather these years for two reasons: one is that our products help our customers save money, the second is that we reduced the size of the company to manage our cash consumption."
Still, if dataConductorEP and its new model for information management succeed, then Syntricity is poised to become a much bigger name in the industry.
