The Austin, Texas-based Sematech semiconductor fabrication equipment consortium has signed joint development contracts that will lead to design, simulation, manufacture and validation of phase shifting masks: contracts were signed with AT&T Microelectronics Inc, Allentown, Pennsylvania; Du Pont Photomask Inc, Wilmington, Delaware; Etec Systems Inc, Hayward, California; and IBM Corp at East Fishkill; AT&T will develop the design portion of the programme, Etec will develop, integrate and market the software for semiconductor design and conduct a feasibility study on semi-automatic and automatic conversion of conventional integrated circuit layout to phase shift layout, and AT&T and Du Pont will make the masks; development pacts for phase shifting mask validation on silicon were signed with AT&T and IBM.
