"If you have to trigger a massive change in your flow, that's not going to work," said Mike Gianfagna, president and CEO of DFM startup Aprio Technologies Inc. "People are not going to accept that."

Instead, changes to the design flow to combat DFM challenges have to be "evolutionary" in nature, according to Srini Raghvendra, senior director of DFM solutions at Synopsys Inc. Raghvendra advocates a "holistic" DFM solution that includes strong integration with design implementation and correlation with foundry flows. He also suggested that individual point tools that claim to improve yield are not an effective solution to the problem.

In an effort to demonstrate the scope of the problem, Jim Hogan, a former general partner at Telos Venture Partners and a member of several company boards, showed data that indicated that design costs will account for more than half of potential revenue for products at the 65-nanometer node.

"Mask costs are insignificant," Hogan said. "The thing that is killing margins is design."

To date, DFM startups have mostly focused on lithography. But Hogan said the next generation of DFM tools to emerge would focus on other areas, such as timing.

Gary Smith, chief EDA analyst at Gartner Dataquest and moderator of the panel, said the industry has "pretty much figured out what we need to do" to improve yields, though various companies are going about implementing DFM strategies that differ depending on their focus.

Indeed, in recent months, DFM-focused companies and executives have more and more been sounding alike when talking about DFM. Among the most common themes of these presentations have been the need to exchange more information between design and manufacturing and the need to implement solutions that do not require each side to become an expert in the other.

This convergence of ideas is a sign of progress for a topic that, while clearly a huge focus for the industry, is often vaguely defined, Gianfagna said. "It's encouraging," he said. "If we can converge on a strategy, that's how the industry will grow."