IN Brief:
- RFPro has been certified for Intel 18A-P and Intel 14A process technologies.
- The software models electromagnetic interaction between RF structures, interconnects, passives, and surrounding circuitry.
- Certification extends Keysight’s existing Intel 18A and EMIB-T advanced-packaging support.
Keysight Technologies has certified its RFPro electromagnetic design software for Intel Foundry’s Intel 18A-P and Intel 14A process technologies, extending process-aligned simulation into the foundry’s latest RF and mixed-signal design environments.
RFPro forms part of the Keysight Advanced Design System and allows electromagnetic interaction between on-chip passives, transmission structures, interconnects, package features, and surrounding circuitry to be analysed. Certification confirms that the software has been evaluated against Intel process data and reference structures.
As operating frequencies rise and physical structures become smaller, electromagnetic behaviour becomes increasingly difficult to separate from circuit behaviour. Inductors, transformers, baluns, matching networks, vias, metal density, and return-current paths can all introduce effects that are represented poorly by ideal circuit elements.
A discrepancy found after tape-out can require a design re-spin, repeating implementation, verification, mask preparation, fabrication, packaging, and test. Accurate EM simulation therefore influences programme cost and schedule as directly as the final RF performance.
Intel 18A-P extends the Intel 18A platform, while Intel 14A introduces further transistor and power-delivery development through RibbonFET 2 and PowerDirect. Revised interconnect and supply structures alter the electromagnetic environment that RF and mixed-signal circuits must occupy.
The certification follows existing Keysight support for Intel 18A and EMIB-T advanced packaging. A related simulation flow across several process generations allows engineering methods, automation, models, and verification experience to be carried forward while manufacturing rules continue to change.
Niels Faché, Senior Vice President, Keysight Design Engineering Software, said: “Design teams can’t wait for a new process node to mature before they trust their simulation results. This certification means engineers can adopt Intel Foundry’s newest technologies early and get the silicon right the first time.”
Parasitics are becoming architectural constraints
RFIC development has always depended on electromagnetic analysis, although advanced integration increases the number of structures able to interact. High-speed digital logic, data conversion, RF blocks, dense power delivery, memory interfaces, and package connections may now occupy a much smaller combined area.
Coupling between those functions can alter gain, noise, linearity, matching, stability, and isolation. Digital switching may inject noise into a sensitive analogue path, while package and interconnect discontinuities can create losses or resonances absent from schematic-only simulation.
Backside and revised power-delivery structures introduce additional considerations. Moving supply routing away from conventional front-side interconnect can release signal resources, but return paths, substrate interaction, local decoupling, and package connectivity still require accurate physical models.
Process certification provides a validated starting point rather than a guarantee of first-pass silicon. Device models, package information, extraction settings, layout detail, temperature assumptions, and manufacturing variation all affect the relationship between simulation and measured performance.
The surrounding Intel ecosystem is developing simultaneously, with Cadence and Synopsys certifying implementation and sign-off tools for the same advanced nodes. Cadence has also brought agentic automation into PCB and package workflows, while Synopsys is combining electrical, thermal, and mechanical analysis across semiconductor systems.
RFPro preserves electromagnetic fidelity within that increasingly automated environment. An AI-assisted tool may generate or optimise a structure, but the resulting layout still requires a solver capable of exposing coupling, loss, field concentration, and resonant behaviour.
Early access to certified simulation is useful only while the PDK, models, and rule set remain controlled. Changes between early and production process kits can require simulations to be repeated and margins reconsidered, particularly around passives and structures sensitive to metal dimensions.
Correlation between test structures, packaged devices, and production silicon will provide the final measure of the certified flow. RFPro now gives designers a supported route to begin that work before Intel’s latest nodes have accumulated several years of production history.
