Powering Future Technology Nodes | PFTN semiconductor

The 4th Intelligent Design Automation Summit (IDAS 2026), hosted by EDA², was held on September 1–2, 2026, at the Zhangjiang Science Hall in Shanghai. The summit brought together core political, industrial, and academic stakeholders, including Guo Lili, Deputy Director of the Department of Electronic Information of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; Yu Wenjie, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization; and Professor Wang Runsheng of Peking University, Chairman of EDA².

As a leading Chinese supplier of manufacturing-oriented EDA and TCAD software, PFTN was invited to attend the summit. Dr. Shen Chen, Founder and Chairman of the company, delivered a report titled "Release of a TCAD-Based Virtual Process Platform" at the main forum, while Dr. Wen Xin, a technical expert at the company, delivered a keynote speech titled "From FinFET to GAA: Advanced Process Evolution and Simulation Technology Challenges" at the Process and Manufacturing Enablement Forum.

The theme of IDAS 2026, "Aiming Far," reflects a profound transition underway in China's semiconductor industry. As process scaling approaches physical limits, the industry is shifting from "geometric scaling" to "temporal scaling," with the "logic folding" advocated by Huawei's "Tao's Law" emerging as a core pathway for the post-Moore era. This is driving the industry's core contradiction to shift from the mere pursuit of process advancement to how EDA tools can be leveraged to unlock system-level potential. Three major trends stood out at the summit: 3D integration, AI empowerment, and system-level collaboration. The decisive factor in competition is no longer a single node, but system-level (STCO) cross-hierarchy co-modeling capability; meanwhile, the widening "scissors gap" between chip complexity and design efficiency urgently demands bidirectional AI empowerment.

At the policy level, Shanghai has explicitly proposed accelerating breakthroughs in EDA/IP, strengthening frontier technological innovation such as AI-EDA, and speeding up the creation of an internationally influential innovation hub for integrated circuit design automation. At the same time, the process roadmaps of Chinese fabs are diverging from international ones, and general-purpose TCAD tools from international giants can no longer fully accommodate differentiated process routes in China. According to industry observations, customer demand for Chinese TCAD suppliers with deep collaborative R&D capabilities is becoming increasingly inelastic.

Against this backdrop, Chinese manufacturing-oriented EDA companies represented by PFTN are entering a strategic window to upgrade from "point-tool substitution" to a "full-process, cross-hierarchy, highly collaborative" industrial software foundation.

As the global semiconductor industry enters the 3nm and below advanced process stage, the industry faces surging R&D costs and lengthening innovation cycles. To this end, EDA², together with PFTN, has built a virtual semiconductor process platform to address process R&D pain points through digital means and support China's independent forward R&D in semiconductors. The platform is part of EDA²'s innovation infrastructure, relying on virtualized simulation to build a full-chain R&D system spanning materials, processes, devices, and design. It serves research institutions and enterprises, creating an industrial cycle of "virtual simulation—technology validation—industrial application."

At the summit, Dr. Shen Chen, Founder of PFTN, released the platform in his report "Release of a TCAD-Based Virtual Process Platform," providing important infrastructure support for industrial innovation. In his keynote report, Dr. Shen outlined the architecture of the company's self-developed virtual process platform. Covering the complete process flow—including chemical mechanical polishing, deposition, lithography, etching, ion implantation, and thermal annealing—the platform enables a forward R&D closed loop from calibration to prediction and then to optimization. Its core technical value lies in the fact that when Chinese fabs face diverging process routes and a lack of measured data, the platform can avert trial-and-error losses of up to ten billion U.S. dollars, providing predictive decision support for process route selection.

At the Process and Manufacturing Enablement Forum, Dr. Wen Xin of PFTN provided an in-depth analysis of the simulation technology challenges in the evolution from FinFET to GAA (Gate-All-Around) advanced processes. Facing new challenges brought by the evolution from FinFET to GAA and CFET, PFTN continues to advance innovation in advanced process and device simulation technologies, building TCAD simulation capabilities that cover cross-scale and multi-physics fields. Through GPU parallel acceleration, hierarchical device models, and block-level DTCO, the platform can support efficient simulation of advanced processes and comprehensive pre-tapeout evaluation. Combined with AI and digital twin technologies, it further empowers process optimization, yield improvement, risk prediction, and manufacturing decision-making.

From an industry perspective, PFTN's appearance at this summit carries deeper significance. For a long time, advanced process simulation and device modeling tools have been highly concentrated among a small number of overseas vendors, while PFTN's self-developed software, MozzTCAD, is one of the few manufacturing-oriented EDA products in China to achieve commercial deployment and continuous iteration.

Dr. Shen Chen previously noted that TCAD, with its full-scenario simulation capabilities, provides a reliable technical validation means for China to explore "non-EUV technology routes." Against the backdrop of the continued manifestation of the "Tao's Law" effect and the divergence of Chinese fabs' process routes from international ones, general-purpose TCAD tools from international giants can no longer fully meet the simulation needs of differentiated process routes in China, and customer demand for Chinese TCAD suppliers with deep collaborative R&D capabilities is becoming increasingly inelastic.

As a leading Chinese TCAD software vendor, PFTN is becoming a collaborative innovation link among fabs, packaging and testing houses, equipment manufacturers, and design companies by connecting a process simulation system spanning the atomic, nanometer, micrometer, and meter scales. It is building a full-stack EDA and system simulation company supported by four major product lines: TCAD+DTCO, virtual fab, packaging simulation, and optoelectronic integration. The company's core product, MozzTCAD, is the only 3D TCAD simulation tool in China that supports advanced logic devices (FinFET, Nanosheet). It has passed acceptance by leading industry customers and has, in some application scenarios, achieved performance surpassing that of international benchmark products. To date, the company has received hundreds of millions of yuan in investment from more than ten institutions, including Hubble Investment, Shenzhen Capital Group, Huichuan Industrial Investment, and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, and has been selected for the national list of potential unicorn enterprises.