CLEVELAND--Keithley Instruments Inc. here announced an alliance with Celestry Design Technologies of San Jose Inc. to support each other's products for semiconductor characterization and modeling.
Initially, the two companies plan to provide support for shared applications using Keithley's model 4200-SCS semiconductor characterization system and Celestry BSIMPro modeling software package. Under the cooperative agreement, the two companies will provide both technical and marketing support for products from each other.
"Our cooperation provides semiconductor device engineers with the productivity gains inherent in the new model 4200-SCS, and the flexibility to do advanced Spice modeling with ease and confidence," said Bill Merkel, market development manager for Keithley's Semiconductor Products Division.
Keithley's 4200-SCS is used by product designers and process engineers to measure device characteristics on processed wafers. These systems are deployed for product development, production applications, reliability testing, failure analysis and incoming inspection.
The 4200-SCS can be used for IC modeling with Celestry's BSIMPro software, which extracts key parameters and optimizes their fit in the appropriate Spice (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) model. The results of the modeling process are used to shorten the time it takes to refine an IC design, said the two partners.