- Keysight Technologies announced the certification of its RFPro electromagnetic simulation software, integrated into its EDA (Electronic Design Automation) suite of tools, for Intel Foundry’s Intel 14A and Intel 18A-P manufacturing processes.
This certification allows engineers designing radio frequency (RF) integrated circuits and mixed-signal circuits to model the electromagnetic behavior of chips by aligning with the exact physical specifications of Intel’s two manufacturing nodes.
The technical objective of this prequalification is to anticipate electromagnetic coupling and interference before the manufacturing phase, in order to avoid costly tape-out iterations in case of discrepancies between the simulation and the actual component behavior.
The transition to Intel’s advanced 18A-P and then 14A nodes is accompanied by architectural evolutions at the semiconductor level, notably the integration of RibbonFET 2 transistor technologies and PowerDirect backside power delivery.
RFPro software supports the modeling of these structures as well as the advanced EMIB-T packaging, ensuring seamless design workflows for applications targeting high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and mobile devices.
This step follows on from the work undertaken by Keysight and Intel Foundry on previous generations of processes, aimed at providing a simulation environment jointly validated by the software vendor and the foundry before wafer production.
