UMC and Ansoft Address RFCMOS Design Requirements with On-Chip Spiral Inductor Library

Electromagnetic Design Methodology (EMDM) uses full-wave 3D simulation to compute inductance and quality factor (Q) of spiral inductors with accuracy traceable to the foundry process

DesignCon, Calif., February 1, 2005-UMC (NYSE:UMC; TSE:2303), a world leading semiconductor foundry, and Ansoft Corporation (NASDAQ: ANST) announced immediate availability of the industry's first parameterized spiral inductor design kit based on full-wave simulation. The kit enables RFCMOS designers to create and simulate custom inductor geometries by directly linking Ansoft HFSS^TM Ansoft Designer^TM and Nexxim^TM with UMC's CMOS process parameters.

The spiral inductor kit is built upon UMC's Electromagnetic Design Methodology (EMDM)-which allows engineers to easily and accurately create any RF structure-and gives designers the flexibility to innovate new geometries simply by editing parameters such as diameter, number of turns, width and spacing of traces from a dialog box in HFSS. Included in the kit are ready-to-solve, fully parameterized HFSS projects for circular, square, hexagonal, and octagonal coils in the regular, stacked, transformer, and balanced configurations with all vias and underpasses included.

"Spiral inductors with small form factors, high Q, and high self-resonant frequencies are highly desired to meet the need for greater portability, increased functionality, and lower costs for today's consumer and military communication systems," said Dr. Albert Yen, manager of UMC's Mixed-mode and Radio Frequency Technology Program. "Our collaboration with Ansoft allows our customers to design, simulate, and optimize spiral inductors on silicon substrates, relieving a major bottleneck of the RF CMOS design flow. Furthermore, we encouraged Ansoft to provide a path to back annotate to backend layout tools, making it very practical to innovate new designs and pass the results to standard layout tools."

"UMC continues to prove to be an excellent partner for Ansoft as it is taking a leadership position in terms of addressing RF designer requirements," said Dr. Lawrence Williams, director of business development at Ansoft. "Early on, UMC recognized the advantages of offering accurate electrical models for on-chip passive components and worked with Ansoft to create a methodology to streamline the process of incorporating the additional accuracy provided directly in circuit simulation. Using EMDM along with the new spiral inductor design kit, customers can now compute the inductance and quality factor (Q) for spiral inductors, rapidly develop a custom library for their own requirements including proximity effects, and utilize them directly in circuit and system simulation. EMDM makes it practical to synthesize entirely new inductors and rapidly back annotate this information into circuit schematics and standard layout tools."

Availability
The UMC spiral design kit with document (TIC no: GT-DBT-041109-001 for 0.15um and GT-DBT-040917-002_ver.1.0P1, GT-DBT-041209-001 for 0.18um ) is currently available for the 0.15um and 0.18um RFCMOS process at no charge to UMC customers and can be accessed by contacting UMC sales representatives.

Component-level Validation
Individual spiral geometries have already been simulated and validated versus laboratory measurements. Ansoft and UMC's teams in Taiwan simulated over 300 spiral geometries to ensure design kit accuracy.

Circuit-level Validation
UMC has designed a 2.4 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) circuit as a test case for RFIC design. The purpose of the project is to validate the models and design flow. The LNA layout was simulated using the new design kit spirals and full layout extraction was performed. Proximity effects for closely spaced spirals and the associated mutual coupling and substrate coupling was calculated using HFSS and results for simulations with and without proximity effects have been reported at international trade events. These results show that additional performance and design margin may be obtained using this modern EM-based RFIC design flow.

On-going Relationship
The release of the spiral inductor design kit is part of a larger collaboration between Ansoft and UMC to develop an EM-based design flow for RFCMOS circuits. The flow is being validated by design and simulation of a direct-conversion ultrawideband (UWB) radio. The goal is to demonstrate radio design, simulation, and fabrication using Ansoft best in class tools and UMC's foundry process. Ansoft and UMC are designing, fabricating and testing the circuits. The result of this effort will validate the EMDM design flow for high-performance radio circuits, validate UMC's process for UWB circuits, and will provide a reference design for UMC and Ansoft customers.

About UMC
UMC (NYSE: UMC, TSE: 2303) is a leading global semiconductor foundry that manufactures advanced process ICs for applications spanning every major sector of the semiconductor industry. UMC delivers cutting-edge foundry technologies that enable sophisticated system-on-chip (SOC) designs, including 90nm copper, 0.13um copper, and mixed signal/RFCMOS. UMC is also a leader in 300mm manufacturing; Fab 12A in Taiwan and Singapore-based UMCi are both in volume production for a variety of customer products. UMC employs over 10,500 people worldwide and has offices in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Europe, and the United States. UMC can be found on the web at http://www.umc.com.

About Ansoft
Ansoft is a leading developer of high-performance electronic design automation (EDA) software. Engineers use Ansoft software to design state-of-the-art electronic products, such as cellular phones, Internet-access devices, broadband networking components and systems, integrated circuits (ICs), printed circuit boards (PCBs), automotive electronic systems and power electronics. Ansoft markets its products worldwide through its own direct sales force and has comprehensive customer-support and training offices throughout North America, Asia and Europe. To learn more, please visit www.ansoft.com.

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