Glasgow University spin-out Gold Standard Simulations (GSS) is licensing its tool suite to GlobalFoundries.

Gold Standard Solutions (GSS), a spin-out of Glasgow University, is licensing its tool suite Tcad/Eda to California-based semiconductor foundry GlobalFoundries. The deal is worth several million dollars, although the exact amount has not been disclosed. The tool suite will allow GlobalFoundries to tackle the challenges of silicon chip development, an increasing problem in the industry. It allows engineers to simulate and predict whether a new silicon chip will work before spending money on a physical prototype. As computer chips become increasingly smaller but more complex, the risk for structural imperfections increases. GSS’s tool suite is the result of two decades of research at Glasgow by professor Asen Asenov. The company was spun out in 2010, with help from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the EU. EPSRC is one of the seven British research councils which provide government funding to universities in the UK. That grant was worth more than £30m ($51m). Asen Asenov, chief executive of GSS and James Watt chair in electrical engineering at Glasgow University, said: “We are delighted to have GlobalFoundries as a GSS customer. I believe this relationship will prove to be highly symbiotic and will lead to advances in both GlobalFoundries’s technology offerings and in driving future developments in the GSS tool chain.”

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