"I'm continually amazed how much time these models save me. Again, I'm really impressed by the quality of your models, your code, your testbenches, and your attention to detail" -Eric Jonas, FMF Model User
FMF Models are developed at Model Foundry Services, a leading third party developer of functional simulation models which are then distributed to system houses for their design verification, through our extensively used distribution site, Free Model Foundry
Model Foundry Services was launched as the major development arm of Free Model Foundry. Founded in 1995, Free Model Foundry is dedicated to promoting standard modeling practices within the electrical engineering community while Model Foundry Services is dedicated to helping IC and IP vendors increase the rate of adoption of their products.
Model Foundry Services promotes the standardization, development, distribution and sharing of functional and timing simulation models for board level components.
As components grow increasingly complex, it is difficult to be sure all aspects of a chip's operations have been accounted for in the board design. MFS understands the needs of design engineers, and have developed open source non-synthesizable FMF models that simulate the functionality of chips at high levels of abstraction. With FMF models, design engineers can verify that the chips are connected correctly, are being used correctly and are meeting all the timing requirements. FMF models are also used in development of FPGA's and ASIC's for verifying the correctness of the chip's interfaces. FMF models are growing in popularity and demand as models for 10,000 parts have been developed and downloaded over a million times annually for board level verification.
Unlike slow, fragile encrypted RTL models which consume too many computer resources during system simulation and may not provide warnings of timing violations and/or protocol errors; FMF functional simulation models written at high levels of abstraction run 10 to 100 times faster during system simulations while being less memory intensive. RTL models must be encrypted differently for each version of simulators in marketplace while FMF models are open source and unencumbered with usage licenses and proprietary software.