1. Purpose and scope
Risk production is the bridge between a qualified process and a production one. The technology has passed its intrinsic qualification and customers have taped out, but the fab has not yet run the node at any meaningful volume, the models have only been correlated to test silicon, and no customer product has been qualified. Customers who start product wafers now accept some risk in exchange for being first to market, and the foundry accepts the obligation to tell them plainly what that risk is.
The stage has three threads running together. Commercially, risk production agreements set out what each customer receives and on what terms. In the fab, tools, materials, recipes and capacity are made ready and the first product lots are run and monitored. In design enablement, the device models and libraries are correlated to the risk silicon and the production design kit is released under change control.
In scope: risk production agreements, the fab readiness review, tool set and materials qualification, risk lot runs and monitoring, support for customer product qualification, model to silicon correlation, silicon validation of foundation IP and the production PDK. Out of scope: the volume ramp and its process control plan, which open at Volume production release.
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