Keysight Technologies, Inc. announced that the RFPro electromagnetic (EM) simulation software, part of the Keysight EDA Advanced Design System (ADS) integrated tool suite, is now certified by Intel Foundry for design engineers targeting Intel 18A process technology. The new EM simulation capability, together with process design kits (PDKs) for Intel 18A circuit and physical designs, enables RFIC design teams to achieve first pass success.

Keysight ADS RFPro is the industry leading platform for RF and microwave circuit design that helps designers address their most difficult challenges with advanced solutions for RFIC and EM simulation. RFPro is a 3D EM simulation interface integrated into ADS, Cadence Virtuoso and Synopsys Custom Compiler environments. RF and microwave circuit designers using these environments can easily run interactive EM-circuit co-simulation for tuning and optimization during layout rather than as a separate, standalone analysis step. RFPro includes 3D planar and full 3D EM simulators with automatic expert setup to accelerate interactive simulation and shorten the design cycle.

Intel Foundry is a world-class wafer foundry deploying a new, world-first approach to full stack solution support for accelerated time to market, leading the industry transition from “system on chip” to “system of chips.”

The Intel 18A PDK from Intel Foundry now includes technology files for use in Keysight EDA RFPro.

Suk Lee, vice president of ecosystem technology office at Intel Foundry, said, “Intel Foundry has been successfully collaborating with Keysight EDA to achieve certification of Intel 18A technology with Keysight’s RFPro, which means that simulation of different inductors attained highly precise correlation per Intel Foundry’s certification standards. We will continue to partner with Keysight to ensure such certifications for our various technology offerings.”

Niels Faché, vice president and general manager at Keysight, said, “Keysight EDA has been a key partner in the EDA Alliance of the Intel Foundry Accelerator Program since early 2023. Our collaboration has produced tool certification of Keysight’s RFPro electromagnetic simulator for Intel Foundry’s leading-edge Intel 18A process technology. RFPro EM simulations are instrumental to the fast and accurate design of RF integrated circuits. Customers using RFPro to perform predictive EM simulation and analyses for their designs in Intel’s 18A process technology ensure their design flows result in first pass success. Beyond this first tool certification, we will continue working with Intel Foundry on simulation support for future process technologies.”