US Patent 7448017 System and method of automatically generating kerf design data

A method and system is provided to use the same design manipulation processes for both chip design and kerf design. Concurrent generation of kerf designs and chip designs provides a consistent, accurate, and repeatable process. Improved quality of wafer testing results because the data in the kerf matches data in the chip. The total cycle time for mask manufacturing is reduced because kerf build is accomplished prior to start of the mask manufacturing process. Also provided is the use of load balancing across multiple servers during kerf and chip design to optimize computing resources.