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As patterns on photomasks are getting more complex due to RET technologies, mask rule check (MRC) has become an essential process before manufacturing photomasks. Design rule check (DRC) tools in the EDA field can be applied for MRC. However, photomask data has unique characteristics different from IC design, which causes many problems when handling photomask data in the same way as the design data.

In this paper, we introduce a novel MRC tool, SmartMRC, which has been developed by SII NanoTechnology in order to solve these problems and show the experimental results performed by DNP. We have achieved high performance of data processing by optimizing the software engine to make the best use of mask datas characteristics. The experimental results show that only a little difference has been seen in calculation time for reversed pattern data compared to non-reversed data. Furthermore, the MRC tool can deal with various types of photomask data and Jobdec in the same transparent way by reading them directly without any intermediate data conversion, which helps to reduce the overhead time. Lastly it has been proven that result OASIS files are several times smaller than GDS files.