MQA 2017 Release Notes

The MQA2017 contains new internal SPICE3 engine, new table generation capability, latest SmartSPICE, Microsoft Office 2016, and all defect fixed from the previous MQA2016.01HF1 and MQA2016.01HF2 releases.

For general information about MQA, visit Keysight EEsof product web-page at:
http://www.keysight.com/find/eesof-products

Enhancements

• New internal SPICE3 supported in MQA
  • Support compact model simulation by MQA internal SPICE3
  • Support latest model version(including BSIMCMG, BSIMIMG, etc.)
  • Support DC/AC simulation only
• New table generation capability using Python script
  • Generate table from MQA running result
  • Powerful script function to automatically create user-defined Excel table
    
• Support latest SmartSPICE
• Support SPECTRE native aging simulation
• Support Microsoft Office 2016
• Support load Modeldiff results generated by command line

Defect fixed

• Fixed that MQA reading result is incorrect with spectre .measure statement
• Fixed that “Load Model Diff Result” doesn’t work correctly
• Fixed that Y axis display is wrong when PMOS is loaded into the multiple Y graph
• Fixed that diode range check always returns zero when parameter doesn’t exist
• Fixed that GoldenGate variable sweep has issue in list mode
• Fixed that user can’t fix frequency in GoldenGate icf file
• Fixed that CSV input is not working while doing different simulator comparison using benchmark rule
• Fixed that Vth gm will be incorrectly calculated if the vgs sweep range is very large

The last point will be treated as the max gm if there is no peak found for gm calculation

Known Issues

• When facing display issues on a 4k resolution screen, add -Dsun.java2d.dpiaware=false after -DMQAHOME="%MQAHOME%"in mqa.bat file

Operating System Support

As previously announced, the Solaris (SUN OS) platform support has been discontinued and MQA 2013.01 is only supported on the LINUX Red Hat and Windows® operating systems.

For more information on supporting Operating System (OS), see Supported Platforms.

Licensing

• MQA 2017 requires: a) the version 2017.01 of the EEsof EDA licensing software, b) a minimum code-word version 2017.01 or above, and c) the licensing server software, lmgrd and agileesofd, to be upgraded to at least the same versions as what are included in EEsof EDA Licensing software 2017.01. MOSAIC will not start if any of these requirements is not met. Refer to the License Codeword Version Compatibility Table.
• In the EEsof EDA License Tools version 2017.01, licensing vendor daemon ( agileesofd ) is integrated with FlexNet FNP 11.13.1.4 version (Windows) and FlexNet FNP 11.13.1.3 version (Linux) of FlexNet license manager daemon ( lmgrd ). For the Windows platform, MOSAIC installer will automatically set up these two new license server daemons by default for the local node-locked license users; for the Linux platform, you need to follow the Linux/Solaris Licensing Setup instruction to complete the licensing configuration process. For more details, refer to Licensing (For Administrators).
• A real-time and systematic license setup troubleshooting utility, Diagnose, is added to the License Manager tool. This utility produces a detailed health report of a user's currently configured licensing environment.
• A My Support ID utility is added to the License manager tool to allow a user to retrieve his/her Support ID required to contact Keysight EEsof Tech Support.

Enhancements and Improvements

• For simplified and robust licensing, PJC (Per Job Control) licenses are no longer checked out by MQA2017.
• The License Setup Wizard no longer requires Administrator privilege on Windows to setup license files. Administrator privilege is only required to setup the windows service that will automatically start the license server upon system restart rather than on EEsof application startup.

Fixed issues

• On windows, a possible Administrator privilege issue preventing the automatic restarting of the FlexFNP license server program, lmgrd after the PC comes out of the hibernation mode has been fixed. The License Setup Wizard will automatically restart the server without any user intervention.
• Unable to setup MQA Licenses using License Setup Wizard

Known Issues

• Dongle drivers for Flex-10 dongles on Linux are release specific. Installing the latest dongle drivers on Linux will function properly only for the most recent EEsof releases.
  Workaround: Install and use dongle drivers as needed.  If you need to run the most recent EEsof releases, use the latest  Flex-10 dongle driver. If you need to use older releases, uninstall the latest dongle driver and re-install the older dongle driver

• FLO and EEsof License setup are writing server logs at different locations. However, the EEsof server log file location is updated in the License Manager > Environment tab.
• When multiple same-named INCREMENT lines of different version exist on the license server, few advanced FlexNet options to reserve/limit licenses may not work properly. 
• Product Selector “Check Availability“ generates incorrect results (which leads to license failure) for older releases when multiple date base versions of like-named bundles exist in the license pool.
• Starting from FlexNet Publisher 2015 (also known as version 11.13.1), the adoption of the best practice of the least-privilege security therein results in the License Server related Windows Service to run with the LocalService Account privilege (instead of the LocalSystem privilege as before.)  Running with the LocalService Account privilege, an executable can no longer access any files located in the per-user specific type of folders.  As a result, any license file placed in those folders can no longer be accessed by the License Server when the License Server is automatically started via the Windows Service upon each PC reboot. For the local node-locked license, this would not result in any disruption to the usage of EEsof applications; however, for the license installed on a network PC that is accessed by multiple client PCs, this may cause EEsof applications not to start after the network PC reboots
  Workaround: Store your license files in the Windows folders that are accessible by the LocalService Account privilege.  For example, C:\ProgramData or C:\users\public are both qualified choices.  In general, any folder that has the "Users" group listed in its Properties>Security page and this "Users" group has the read permission enabled should work. 
• Starting from FlexNet Publisher 2015 (aka version 11.13.1), the default licensing timeout is set to 3 seconds (from the previous 0.1 second) to better accommodate systems with high network latency. This could cause certain utilities in the License Manager to perform slower than before.
  Workaround: Set the FlexNet licensing timeout to 0.2 seconds, via setting the environment variable FLEXLM_TIMEOUT=200000, to minimize the performance degradation.  However, if the network latency is already an issue in your environment, you may need to fine-tune this setting to minimize the general performance degradation while still accommodating the network latency.
• Installation of EESof EDA tools (such as, SystemVue 2016.08, Genesys 2017.XX, or ADS 2017.XX) may hang at 4% (percentage vary based on the products) for few hours or even more on some specific machines.
  Workarounds:
  • Disable Firewall setting in Anti-Virus Software installed on the PC.
    or
  • Download and unzip process explorer from the below link and then invoke procexp.exe.
    https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx
    Right click on the wusa.exe process under <Product installer exe> and select KillProcess. Now it will continue the product installation.
• After installing EESof EDA tools (such as, SystemVue 2016.08, Genesys 2017.XX, or ADS 2017.XX) successfully and try to invoke the software or License wizard, you may encounter “api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll” missing error.
  
  Workaround: Install the Update for Universal C Runtime in Windows .  On Windows 64-bit system systems, the file to install is x64 version of the Microsoft hotfix KB2999226.  A copy of the Windows6.1-KB2999226-x64.msu Microsoft 64-bit hotfix installer can be found under the C:\Program Files\Keysight\EEsof_License_Tools\bin directory.  The Microsoft hotfix KB2999226 can be found under the Update for Universal C Runtime in Windows  page at  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2999226/update-for-universal-c-runtime-in-windows as well.
• On a newly formatted RHEL system, the EEsof Licensing tools may fail to boot. This is because the FlexNet Publisher 2015 requires a certain rpm
  Workaround: Under the EEsof product installation directory, there exists a utility script named "Linux_sys_check.sh" under the bin directory.  Run this script to find out whether any rpm is missing; run this script with a "-y" command-line option to also have all the missing rpms automatically installed if you have the sudo or root privilege.
• License server may stop recognizing Flex-10 dongle on some systems within a few hours after starting
  Workaround: If you experience this problem, install the latest WibuKey drivers from Wibu Systems.
• Unable to install Flex-10 driver if Flex-9 dongle is already plugged into a machine
  Workaround: Before installing a Flex-10 driver for the first time, unplug the Flex-9 dongle.
• There is a known FlexNet Publisher issue, whereby mixing node-locked codewords and floating codewords in one license file can result in: a) Remote simulations not working or b) A second local simulation not working in case the license is node-locked and also has incorrect version.
  Workaround: It is strongly recommended that you do not mix node-locked codewords and floating codewords in one license file nor in any configuration that ends up with node-locked codewords and floating codewords both available on the same server. In other words, put the node-locked license and the floating license on different servers, and point to the respective one based on what you need to run.
• If a user simultaneously runs two instances of a product and has mixed different versions of the same codeword on one license server, extra licenses may be pulled and result in unexpected “Licensed number of users already reached for this feature” errors.
  Workaround: We recommend you remove expired codewords, to separate out the new and the old versions of codewords into different files and different servers, and to point to the respective one based on what you need to run.
• Not specifying the TCP/IP port for the license server during license setup may lead to unexpected behavior and/or license checkout failure on the Windows platform. We strongly recommend you to always explicitly specify the TCP/IP port associated with each license server.
• A node-locked and floating bundle operating on Linux cannot be shared between products using EDA License Tools version older than 2014.01 when run at the same time.
• License Setup Wizard does not remove any previous user-configured FLEX Windows License Service manually set up by a user using FlexNet's lmtools.
  Workaround: You must remove the previous user-configured Windows License Service via lmtools.

  • Run the lmtools.exe from C:\Program Files\Agilent\EEsof_License_Tools\bin to invoke the lmtools utility. The lmtools utility window is displayed.

    If you have installed an EEsof product released before 1st August, 2014 on your system prior to installing an EEsof product released after 1st August, 2014 then the default EEsof Licensing tools path will remain C:\Program Files\Agilent\EEsof_License_Tools. On the systems that only have EEsof products released after 1st August, 2014 installed then the default EEsof Licensing tools path will be C:\Program Files\Keysight\EEsof_License_Tools.

  • In the Service/License File tab, check the Configuration using Services option. All user-configured FLEX Windows License Services will be listed.
  • Select the service you wish to remove.
  • Select the Config Services tab and click the Remove Service button to remove the service.
    To ensure that the license service or lmgrd is running, click View Log. A log window appears that confirms whether agileesofd and lmgrd are up and running.
• While running multiple versions of prior SHORT_PRODUCT_NAME releases together, set PRODUCT_NAME_MAXIMUM_BUNDLE_USAGE=ON in your environment so that all of them will use the same method to check out licenses. Otherwise, you might receive an error message, "Licensed number of users already reached".
• On some Windows 7 machines, when more than one definition of an Ethernet adapter exists (duplicates), license checkouts may appear to hang up.
  Workaround: Disable the duplicate network card definitions in your network settings: Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network Connections. This issue has been acknowledged by Flexera and they have created a bug report (SIOC-000103097).
• For LSF style distributed simulations, ensure that the PATH on the client computer points to the $HPEESOF_DIR/EEsof_License_Tools/${architecture} directory that corresponds to the EEsof release being used. This needs to be done in order to ensure that the proper version of the Flexera utilities (like lmutil ) gets picked up in the path before any older in-compatible versions (that may also be installed on a users’ system.)
• License Setup Wizard ( aglmwizard.exe ), which is used to set up and record the license path would not work if you already have an environment variable set for PRODUCT_NAME_LICENSE_FILE.
  Workaround: You can use PRODUCT_NAME_LICENSE_FILE variable to point to license file or refer to Licensing (For Administrators).
• The License Setup Wizard will exit or not properly configure a license server, if the server has all of its licenses currently in use.
  Workaround: Wait for a license on the server to become available as you normally would before launching the product.
• Unable to set license in case unicode characters are used either in path or license file name because the Flex License Service does not support these characters.

• The Product Selector tool will be unable to display the license server status properly when connected to older license server.
  Workaround: Upgrade your license server to the latest version.

• EEsof Licensing Tools installer can hang on systems with McAfee LiveSafe installed and running the default firewall settings.

  Workaround:  Prior to installing EEsof Licensing Tools, temporarily turn off the McAfee LiveSafe firewall.

• Licensing setup steps on systems with McAfee LiveSafe installed can fail.

  Workaround:  Under the McAfee LiveSafe firewall settings, under Port and Settings, allow the use of port 27001 for lmgrd.exe under the EEsof Licensing Tools installation bin directory.  Under Internet Connections for Programs, enable lmgrd.exe, aglmmgr.exe and aglmwizard.exe for all devices and turn off monitoring.