Agilent Software Adopted by Microchip Technology
December 9, 2013. Agilent Technologies today announced that Microchip Technology Inc., a provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog, and flash-IP solutions, has adopted Agilent EEsof EDA’s Model Builder Program (MBP) and Model Quality Assurance (MQA) software. Microchip Technology will use the software to create internal fabrication device model libraries or process design kits, to modify external foundry libraries, and to validate supported devices from internal and external sources.
Microchip Technology’s design environment requires validated-device-model measures of quality, such as mathematical robustness, compatibility, and accuracy. Such performance measurements must be acquired across a diverse set of technologies, multiple foundries and internal fabs, multiple process variations, and multiple simulators.
Agilent EEsof’s MBP and MQA software addresses this challenge by enabling Microchip Technology to quickly assess both internal technologies and external foundry libraries for quality and analyze performance in operational regions of interest. MBP is used for easy modification of foundry device models, while MQA automatically validates and documents the results. The software also enables rapid qualification of second-source foundry libraries.
“Process design kits are critical to ensuring our designers get the most out of our semiconductors,” said Mac McKeen, technical fellow at Microchip Technology. “With Agilent EEsof’s MBP and MQA software, our modeling and technology group is now able to increase the efficiency and effectiveness with which it supports our broad range of semiconductor design activities, and subsequently PDKs.”
“We are proud that foundries and integrated device manufacturers worldwide have adopted our device modeling products, which include IC-CAP, WaferPro, MBP, and MQA, as the leading solutions for device modeling and measurement,” said Brian Chen, device modeling product manager at Agilent EEsof EDA. “We are particularly gratified to see that a large and growing number of fab-lite and fabless design houses, as well as IDMs like Microchip Technology, have chosen these products to create differentiation, increase operation efficiency, reduce time-to-market, and gain competitive advantage. With superior field support and significant R&D investment, we are committed to making these solutions the easy choice for device-modeling and foundry-interface organizations in semiconductor companies.”