D2S

About D2S

D2S, also known as Design2Silicon, positions itself as a critical partner in the semiconductor manufacturing sector, specializing in GPU-accelerated software and systems. Founded in February 2007 by Aki Fujimura, the company is headquartered in San Jose, California. Fujimura, who serves as Chairman and CEO, brings a wealth of experience from the electronic design automation (EDA) industry, having held roles such as CTO at Cadence Design Systems and executive positions at Simplex Solutions and Pure Software, both of which went public during his tenure. His background, including a BS/MS in Electrical Engineering from MIT and founding Tangent Systems (later acquired by Cadence), has deeply influenced D2S's focus on bridging design and manufacturing.

The company's business model revolves around providing high-performance computational solutions that address the increasing complexity of semiconductor manufacturing, particularly for advanced process nodes. D2S serves leading equipment partners, photomask manufacturers, and wafer manufacturers. Revenue is generated through the sale of its core products: the TrueMask® solutions and the Computational Design Platform (CDP). The CDP is a scalable, cleanroom-ready hardware and software solution engineered for the demanding 24/7 operational environment of semiconductor fabs. This platform leverages the parallel processing power of NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate simulation-based applications like inverse lithography technology (ILT), mask process correction (MPC), and deep learning. By January 2021, its seventh-generation CDP, using NVIDIA A40 GPUs, could achieve 1.8 PetaFLOPS of computing power per rack.

A key offering, TrueMask® ILT, utilizes the CDP to enable the use of complex curvilinear shapes on photomasks, which results in superior wafer quality compared to traditional rectilinear designs. This is crucial as the industry pushes into the 3-nm era and beyond, where such precision is paramount. D2S has established itself as a thought leader in this domain, managing the eBeam Initiative to promote the use of electron-beam technologies and co-founding the Center for Deep Learning in Electronics Manufacturing (CDLe). The company's significant milestone of receiving an order for its 50th CDP in June 2023 underscores the industry's adoption of its GPU-based approach.