Patent ID: 8285575

Claim:
A computer program product that includes a computer-readable medium, the medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions which, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to execute a method, the computer program product comprising: an inference engine communicably coupled to a virtual fab, wherein the virtual fab comprises a plurality of entities that are communicably coupled via a network, and a database that stores client information, and the virtual fab is configured to: receive integrated circuit manufacturing orders from a plurality of clients; and facilitate access to client information by the plurality of clients and the entities as the entities produce the integrated circuit manufacturing orders; and wherein the inference engine is configured to rank the plurality of clients using at least one parameter associated with each of the plurality of clients, the inference engine comprising: a knowledge collection module configured to collect client information based on the at least one parameter; and a calculation module configured to receive the collected information and calculate a client listing ranking the plurality of clients using a parameter-based cost function; and a user interface operable to: enable a user to select the at least one parameter associated with each of the plurality of clients; enable the user to assign at least one weighting factor to the selected at least one parameter associated with each of the plurality of clients; display the client listing calculated by the calculation module, wherein the calculation module calculates the client listing based on the selected at least one parameter and the assigned at least one weighting factor for the at least one parameter, wherein the parameter-based cost function comprises the at least one parameter, wherein the parameter-based cost function is a linear function including at least one term, wherein each term is a product of one of the selected at least one parameter and one of the assigned at least one weighting factor correspondingly, and wherein the assigned at least one weighting factor is associated with a weighting category selected from the group consisting of process technology, technology file download, library download, chip implementation, reference flow download, and new tapeout.