Keysight Certifies EM Design Software for Intel Foundry's Newest Chip Processes

Keysight Technologies has certified its RFPro electromagnetic (EM) design software, part of its Advanced Design System EDA suite, for use with Intel Foundry's Intel 14A and Intel 18A-P manufacturing processes. The certification is meant to give designers working on radio frequency and mixed-signal chips confidence that simulations run in RFPro will accurately predict how a chip will actually behave once manufactured on these newer Intel processes.

The certification addresses a real risk in chip design: as manufacturing processes get more advanced, design teams are under more pressure to move faster while still avoiding costly mistakes. If a mismatch between how a circuit is simulated electromagnetically and how it actually behaves only shows up after the chip has already been manufactured, known as tape-out, fixing it means an expensive redesign and another manufacturing run. That's why simulation tools need to be validated against a specific manufacturing process before engineers even start designing for it, and Keysight's certification gives teams that assurance as Intel Foundry rolls out its roadmap from Intel 18A to 18A-P and Intel 14A, the latter of which introduces two new architectures, RibbonFET 2 for transistors and PowerDirect for power delivery.

This builds on an existing collaboration between Keysight and Intel Foundry that already includes support ...