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Foundry services: PDK development, library characterization, IP qualification and foundry certification

Your customers judge your process by the kit, libraries and IP you hand them, and Silvaco builds and qualifies that enablement with you, from SPICE models to physical verification with foundry certification from Tower Semiconductor, X-FAB and UMC.

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What your customers need before they design on your process

Your process reaches designers as a kit. They open the PDK, place cells from your characterized libraries, drop in IP qualified for your node and run your rule decks at sign-off. If any piece is late or wrong, they notice it long before they see the silicon.

And the kit is never finished. Each new process, and every change to a running one, means models to re-extract, libraries to re-characterize and decks to requalify. Whoever carries that work has to keep your pace and meet your standards. Your customers expect it to drop into the flow they run today.

Where Silvaco fits in your process enablement

Everything in a kit rests on the models, so that's where the work starts. If your team is short on modeling or library engineers, Silvaco's engineers can do that part.

  1. Your process Devices, layers and design rules
  2. Utmost IV Extracts SPICE models from measured or simulated data, then validates them
  3. Expert The layout side of your PDK, custom-built or iPDK
  4. Gateway The schematic side, with OpenAccess and iPDK support
  5. Library Characterization Characterizes, validates and optimizes your cell libraries
  6. SmartDRC/LVS Rule decks, with certification on processes at three foundries
  7. Silvaco services SPICE modeling, library design and characterization, delivered as a service
  8. FTCO Takes the work past the kit and into your fab

What Silvaco can carry for your process

Where your enablement team is stretched, these are the pieces you can hand to Silvaco.

  • Foundry certification

    SmartDRC/LVS is silicon-proven, and three foundries have certified it on processes of their own: Tower Semiconductor, X-FAB and UMC. Rule decks exist for processes at other foundries too, among them ams, IHP, SkyWater and Vanguard. Ask about yours before you write a deck from scratch.

  • PDK development

    Expert and Gateway support iPDKs on OpenAccess, and Silvaco keeps a long list of custom PDKs for both. Already running Virtuoso? Expert imports that technology information, so your kit starts from what you have.

  • Library characterization

    Characterize a new library, or re-characterize one after a process change. You get Liberty views carrying the timing, power and noise models, plus Verilog and VITAL files. Output covers the NLDM, NLPM, CCS and ECSM formats, with LVF for variation. Silvaco also designs and optimizes standard cell libraries, as an independent IP vendor or alongside your own library team.

  • Model generation

    Utmost IV fits SPICE models to the device data you have, simulated or measured, and checks each one before it goes into your kit. Silvaco's SPICE modeling service will also do the extraction for you. It covers CMOS, SOI and TFT devices, bipolar transistors and diodes, JFETs, HEMTs and IGBTs, plus resistors and capacitors.

  • Fab-level engagement

    FTCO takes the same TCAD physics into the fab. Physics-based simulation, your production data and AI train a digital twin, and your engineers calibrate and optimize the process against it. Micron Technology uses it this way for memory development.

Applications

From the first kit on a new process to decks certified for it.

Foundries already building enablement with Silvaco

Three foundries stand behind Silvaco physical verification with their own certification, and two describe the library work behind their kits.

More on foundry enablement

Planning enablement for a new process?

Tell our engineers which process it is and what your customers are waiting on: the kit, the libraries, the models or the rule decks. They'll tell you which parts Silvaco can take on and how each would be qualified for your customers.

Talk to our Technical Experts Documentation Support and Downloads

Questions about foundry enablement

Foundry enablement is everything a foundry releases so customers can design on its process: the PDK, SPICE models, characterized cell libraries, qualified IP and physical verification rule decks. Designers weigh a process by how complete and current that set is. It has to be rebuilt and requalified each time the process changes.

A PDK turns a process into something designers can use: device symbols and layouts, SPICE models, technology files and verification rule decks, set up for their design tools. Development means extracting the models, building and testing the kit, then maintaining it through every process revision. An interoperable PDK, or iPDK, lets one kit serve several tool flows.

Tower Semiconductor, X-FAB and UMC have granted foundry certification to Silvaco DRC and LVS for processes of their own, and the tools are silicon-proven. Decks for ams, IHP, SkyWater and Vanguard processes exist as well. Certification applies process by process, so confirm yours with our technical experts before you plan around it.

Library characterization simulates each cell in a standard cell library across process, voltage and temperature corners. Timing, power and noise results go into Liberty views, the format your customers' synthesis and timing tools read. Foundries and IP providers redo it whenever a process is introduced or revised. Silvaco supplies it as tools and as a service.

Silvaco has built custom PDKs, supports iPDKs, and designs and characterizes cell libraries as a service. Its design kit and library work with Tower Semiconductor includes libraries for a 65 nm power management process. Whether that extends to your new process depends on the process, so the first step is a conversation with our technical experts.

Enablement usually ends where the kit ships. FTCO goes into the fab. It builds an AI-trained digital twin from physics-based simulation and production data, so fab engineers can calibrate and tune the process itself. Micron Technology is one published example, in memory development.

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