Keysight EDA Strengthens Design and Simulation Support for Tower Semiconductor RF Process Technologies

By: Keysight Technologies, Inc. via Business Wire

November 15, 2023 at 11:00 AM EST

Design engineers seamlessly simulate integrated circuits targeting Tower’s radio frequency technologies using the suite of Keysight Electronic Design Automation software with the latest process design kits
Electro-thermal simulation in Keysight's Advanced Design Systems ensures radio frequency integrated circuits targeting Tower SiGe90 meet operating temperature specifications

Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS) expanded the simulation capabilities in its Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software suite to include electro-thermal simulation for the Tower Semiconductor SiGe Power Amplifier (PA) process. Together with process design kits (PDKs) for Tower radio frequency (RF) technologies for circuit and physical designs, the new electro-thermal simulation enables integrated circuit (IC) designers to achieve first pass success.

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Simulated electro-thermal results in ADS show expected gradient in the temperature profile with the inner emitter regions of heater NPN being hottest and heat diffusing out symmetrically to the sensor NPNs. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Keysight Advanced Design System (ADS), RFPro, and RFIC Design (GoldenGate) are industry leading platforms for RF and microwave circuit design that help designers address their most difficult challenges with advanced solutions for radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), electromagnetic (EM), and electro-thermal simulation. Platform interoperability allows IC designers to access Keysight simulation technologies independent of which schematic or layout environment they use to generate the design.

Tower offers silicon-based analog foundry technologies – silicon germanium (SiGe) for both high-speed and high-power and RF silicon-on-insulator (SOI) – optimized to assist chip suppliers in delivering differentiated RF front-end solutions for increasingly complex devices. Designers employ Tower’s latest PDKs in developing and simulating their RFICs for various applications with Keysight EDA tools.

Dr. Samir Chaudhry, Senior Director of Design Enablement at Tower Semiconductor, said: “Tower has been successfully collaborating with Keysight to solve the most complex RF problems for our customers. Keysight supports our RF PDKs for design and simulation in ADS with accurate electromagnetic analysis in RFPro. Enablement of Keysight’s differentiated electro-thermal solution in ADS for Tower’s SiGe PA processes is a welcome move that is already helping RF SiGe customers perform accurate thermal analyses of their designs.”

Nilesh Kamdar, Senior Director and RF/Microwave Portfolio Manager at Keysight, said: “Keysight and Tower have been partnering for more than a decade to enable our mutual customer design flows with advanced RF solutions, helping them to achieve faster time-to-market. This year, our partnership achieved another milestone by providing electro-thermal simulation capability for Tower’s RF SiGe processes as part of ADS. Using this new capability, customers can ensure that their ICs perform within acceptable operating temperatures prior to manufacturing.”

Visit the Tower Semiconductor foundry page for more information about Keysight EDA support for Tower technologies.

Visit Tower Semiconductor for more information about the company. Credentialed Tower customers can find the RF PDKs for use in Keysight EDA software available in the Tower eBizz portal.

About Keysight Technologies

At Keysight (NYSE: KEYS), we inspire and empower innovators to bring world-changing technologies to life. As an S&P 500 company, we’re delivering market-leading design, emulation, and test solutions to help engineers develop and deploy faster, with less risk, throughout the entire product lifecycle. We’re a global innovation partner enabling customers in communications, industrial automation, aerospace and defense, automotive, semiconductor, and general electronics markets to accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world. Learn more at Keysight Newsroom and www.keysight.com.