2021.03 – 2021.04

DiesOnWafer Calculator

The most square dies that fit on a circular wafer, found by an iterative search that guarantees the best layout.

Code

This program will calculate the maximum number of square dies that can be cut from a circular wafer. Results and calculations will be visually displayed and final values will be printed to the terminal.

Semiconductor research is a field that deals with the design, development, and testing of electronic components made from semiconductor materials. One of the key components in this field is the wafer, which is a thin slice of semiconductor material (such as silicon) that is used as a substrate for building electronic circuits.

In the semiconductor industry, it's important to be able to maximize the number of dies (individual integrated circuits) that can be produced on a single wafer. This is because the cost of producing a wafer is relatively fixed, but the cost per die decreases as the number of dies per wafer increases. Therefore, being able to fit more dies onto a single wafer can significantly reduce the cost of production.

There are other similar calculators online, but this calculator was built to prioritize the following functionalities:

Algorithmically guaranteed accurate values every time at a customizable granularity

Support for wafers of any size, including non-standard

Support for any die size

Support for dies lost to a CMOS notch

Support for edge exclusion caused by limited epitaxy growth

Tunable accuracy (stepping size)

Other calculators often prioritize speed and efficiency, and use an analytical approach. Thus, these calculators produce inconsistent values, are not highly flexible, or have no visual display. This calculator uses an iterative approach instead, which guarantees the best possible configuration. This calculator can also accept any wafer size, die size, notch height, and edge exclusion without affecting accuracy.