Bangalore: Magma Design Automation, a provider of chip design software has announced the development of a new yield enhancement software system, customized for solar fabs to improve conversion efficiency, increase yield and reduce the manufacturing costs of solar cells.

Magma is collaborating with Pegasus Semiconductor-Solar to refine product specifications and test the new product, based on Magma's YieldManager software system.

Magma's new product will allow solar fabs to better monitor all metrology, inspection and performance data throughout the manufacturing process. This would enable fab operators to identify and correct root causes of solar-efficiency and yield degradation caused by subtle fab processing fluctuations. Improving the energy conversion efficiency, reducing the manufacturing costs and increasing the yield of silicon wafer-based solar cells are critical to the growth of the solar market.

YieldManager enables fast analysis and correlation of disparate data from most of the equipment in the manufacturing line.

Magma is collaborating with several solar fabs and will soon announce installation sites in Asia.