Silvaco Group, Inc. said August 18 it is partnering with Dassault Systèmes to build interoperable digital twin workflows for semiconductor manufacturing, an effort the companies frame around what they call "first-time-right" process development.
The partnership links Dassault Systèmes' SIMULIA plasma simulation software with Silvaco's Victory Process feature-scale process simulation tool. That connection is meant to trace how equipment-level conditions, including plasma-based etch and deposition steps, shape wafer-level feature evolution, rather than treating reactor physics and process modeling as separate problems. A second link carries structure and material data generated inside Silvaco's process simulation into SIMULIA's structural analysis environment, supporting the stress and deformation studies the companies say matter more as advanced device architectures shrink.
What's new here is the attempt to chain three simulation scales, reactor, feature, and structural, into a single workflow so engineering data moves between tools without manual re-entry of geometry and material properties.
Semiconductor manufacturers are working with narrower process windows as device architectures grow more complex, and each physical experiment in the fab carries real cost and schedule risk. Silvaco CEO Walden C. Rhines said the companies want customers to "move closer to first-time-right manufacturing, accelerate yield ramps, reduce development risk, and advance the adoption of digital twin methodologies across the semiconductor industry."
Neither company has set a release date for the interfaces or named a launch customer. The initial focus is practical interoperability between the two platforms, with broader digital twin deployment across semiconductor manufacturing positioned as a longer-term goal rather than an immediate product.
