PROLITH (abbreviated from Positive Resist Optical LITHography) is a computer simulator modeling the

optical Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...

and

chemical A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., wi ...

aspects of

photolithography In integrated circuit manufacturing, photolithography or optical lithography is a general term used for techniques that use light to produce minutely patterned thin films of suitable materials over a substrate, such as a silicon wafer, to protect ...

. Chris Mack started developing PROLITH after he began working in the field of photolithography at the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

in 1983. PROLITH was first developed on an

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

. The models implemented by the software were based on the work done by Rick Dill at IBM and Andy Neureuther at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

, together with Chris Mack's own contributions such as the Mack model. Originally PROLITH was given away for free, while NSA was paying Chris Mack's salary.{{cite web, url = http://www.lithoguru.com/scientist/resume.html , title = Chris Mack's resume In 1990 he founded FINLE Technologies to commercialize PROLITH. The first commercial version of the software, named PROLITH/2, was released in June of that year. PROLITH was made easier to use and it grew to include many more aspects of lithography simulation. FINLE Technologies was purchased in February 2000 by

KLA-Tencor KLA Corporation is an American capital equipment company based in Milpitas, California. It supplies process control and yield management systems for the semiconductor industry and other related nanoelectronics industries. The company's products ...

, which now markets PROLITH.

References

External links

Semiconductor device fabrication Scientific simulation software