Oasis Tooling Names Wesley Erck Vice President of Mask Data Management Systems

Business Wire, April 13, 2005

ALAMO, Calif. -- Oasis Tooling today named Wesley Erck as vice president of mask data management systems. Erck will develop new technology to standardize and simplify the photomask engineering and acquisition process.

Erck joins Oasis Tooling with more than 25 years in mask equipment engineering, mask making and automated mask data preparation and has been the Chairman of the SEMI P10 Task Force since its inception in 1986.

"Wes is a great addition to our talented team," said OASIS Tooling's CEO and President Thomas Grebinski. "His vision and direction will be crucial in combining mask meta data information with mask data itself, as represented in OASIS, OpenAccess or GDSII, or other pattern files, in an integrated, simple-to-use system."

Erck will develop a tool suite linked to a comprehensive relational database allowing users to access all of the mission-critical data needed to manufacture and deliver error-free photomasks to a foundry or IDM. The new technology is based on the SEMI P10 Specification of Data Structures for Photomask Orders. Implementation of SEMI P10 gained considerable interest recently due to the increasingly complex mask data preparation process for next generation masks and the overwhelming amount of related detail that must be managed to build masks right the first time. The persistent industry-wide mask order entry and data preparation error rate has a large impact on product delivery.

"The cost of such an implementation is considerably high and needs to be spread out over several companies," Erck stated. "The complexities of the implementation can be resolved collaboratively among those companies adding their unique points of view and use of the technology. The new technology will greatly reduce or even eliminate such errors."

Oasis Tooling provides a mask data management system extensible enough to scale with each technology node and portable enough to be accessible, mergeable and editable. Verification test cases for the implementation are included. The integrated modules over a common database include mask shop, purchasing, mask data preparation, foundry, IDM, and design tape out.

About Oasis Tooling

Oasis Tooling develops OASIS development, verification and acceptance technology for IDM's, foundries, design automation companies, mask shops and for companies who manufacture mask pattern generators. For more information, visit the website at http://www.oasistooling.com.