Device Modeling MQA 2024 Update 1.0 Release Notes

This document describes new features, functionality, fixed issues and known issues in  Device Modeling MQA 2024 Update 1.0. It also includes documentation changes and provides workarounds for defects wherever possible.

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

By default,  Device Modeling MQA uses  OpenJDK 1.8.0_382 . If you install another JDK version, you have to comply with the JDK license requirements.  Oracle JDK 8 Update 202 (jdk1.8.0_202) is the last commercial license supported under BCL.

What's New

Enhancements

• Support to configure the etc directory from system environment variables or GUI.
• Updated the default JDK to OpenJDK 1.8.0_382.

Issues Fixed

• Fixed the issue for creating projects of comparison when the loop table contains model name.
• Fixed the issue in the example rule with contour plot.

Known Issues

• When the display resolution used by the user is relatively high, 2K or 4K, after  Device Modeling MQA is opened, the display interface and font size will be small.
  Workaround: You need to manually find the mqa.bat in the MQAHOME/bin directory. Edit the bat file, add option -Dsun.java2d.dpiaware=false. The configuration statement is shown below.
  

Licensing

• Device Modeling MQA  requires: a) the version 2023.02  of the EEsof EDA licensing software, b) a minimum code-word version 2023.02 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 2023.02 or above . Device Modeling MQA 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, licensing vendor daemon ( agileesofd ) is integrated with FlexNet FNP 11.18.1 version (Windows) and FlexNet FNP 11.18.1 version (Linux) of FlexNet license manager daemon ( lmgrd ). For the Windows platform,  Device Modeling MQA 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 Setting Up Licenses on Linux instruction to complete the licensing configuration process. For more details, refer to Licensing (For Administrators).

Documentation

The new UI improves overall online help usability by providing the following key benefits in addition to several other minor benefits:

• Table of Contents Sidebar: Displays collapsible Table of Contents for the entire documentation. The left-double-arrow icon collapses the sidebar, and the right-double-arrow icon displays the sidebar back again.
• PDF Button: Allows you to instantly generate PDFs of the latest documentation anytime, including current page’s children pages. Currently, the PDF generation option is available only for 2020 release. For other releases, you can switch to their Printing Manuals page and download the existing PDFs like earlier.
• Product Release Switcher: Allows you to view the current page in other supported releases listed in the drop-down menu. Once you select a release from the drop-down menu, the current page is updated to show the content applicable to the selected release. The Table of Contents is updated as well. With this, you bookmark URL of only one release and then switch to other releases from this drop-down menu.
• Latest Documentation: The documentation available in the new UI is always kept updated for all supported releases. These updates are available to you as soon as they happen at our end. This provides you 24x7 access to the most recent and technically accurate documentation.

For more details, see How to Use Online Help.

Licensing Issues Fixed

• The issue related to the vendor daemon agileesofd could sometimes crash while the License Manager and the Product Selector was running on a remote Windows 8 machine has now been fixed with the newer FlexNET publisher 2015 (also known as version 11.13.1) that is automatically installed by the MQA installer. 

Supported Platforms

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

The following are Device Modeling MQA supported platforms:

OS and Version	Windows XP	Windows 7 Enterprise	Windows 7 Enterprise	Windows 8 Enterprise	Windows 8 Enterprise	Windows 10	Windows 11	RedHat Linux RHEL4	RedHat Linux RHEL5	RedHat Linux RHEL6	RedHat Linux RHEL7	RedHat Linux RHEL8	RedHat Linux RHEL9
32/64 bit	32/64	32	64	32	64	64	64	64	64	64	64	64	64
MQA 2011.2.0
MQA 2012.07
MQA 2013.01
MQA 2014.04
MQA 2016.01
MQA 2017
MQA 2019
MQA 2020
MQA 2020 Update 1.0
MQA 2020 Update 2.0/2.1
MQA 2022
MQA 2023
MQA 2023 Update 1.0
MQA 2024
MQA 2024 Update 1.0
MQA 2025						*

* Windows 10 is deprecated

Legend	Description
	Supported
	Unsupported

Known Issues - Documentation

• On Windows, Printing directly from installed help generates non-readable output. Workaround: Use PDF version of the document for printing purpose.

• In the installed help when you open a page using the "Open a link in new tab" option the help does not open a page in a different tab by default. You need to set the preferences to open any link in a new tab. To set the preferences:

  1. From the 201x version of the installed help, Click Edit > Preferences. The Preferences Dialog box is displayed.

  2. Select the Options tab.

  3. Under Appearance, select the Show tabs for each individual page option.

  This is one time setting for a particular release of a product.
• While using the installed help, you may encounter issues like help not showing any content, it throws an error, it displays unexpected hierarchy in the Content tab, or it does not display any search results. Workaround: Close the help, delete the contents of the following directory and open the help again.
  • On Windows: C:\Users\<Windows_Login_ID>\AppData\Local\Keysight\Help        
  • On Linux: $HOME/.local/share/Keysight/Help
• The installed help search does not support [] or {} or any other text using these combinations.

Known Issues - Licensing

• WibuKey driver version 6.30 is incompatible with Windows 11 Core Isolation/Memory Integrity settings. These settings must be disabled for the v6.30 driver to work.
  Workaround: To make these settings active/ON, the solution is to unload the v6.30 driver and install the v6.51 driver, which is compatible with these settings.

• During the installation of new Keysight EDA products on Windows, you may encounter a failure to upgrade the EEsof License Tools to the newer version. This may result in the product failing to start, displaying an error message stating, "Unable to run due to incompatible License Server version". The error is similar to the following:

  

  
  

  Workaround: Follow these steps:

  1. Ensure that the background processes such as lmgrd and/or agileesofd are not running.
  2. Run the Uninstall_LicensingDaemon.exe with administrator rights (for example, right-click and select the Run As Administrator option). You can find this executable on your machine at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Keysight\Licensing Daemon\uninstall.
  3. Install the latest LicensingDaemon.exe with administrator rights (for example, right-click and select the Run As Administrator option). You can download it from the product download page - Licensing Software Downloads - Keysight Knowledge Center.

• On Linux, if you try to replace a license file, an error is displayed.
  Workaround: First clear the existing license file, close the License Manager Wizard. Now, open the wizard and then add the new license file.

• The new license server software packaged in the EEsof EDA License Tools version 2014.01 does not work on SuSE 10 platform. Use SuSE 11 or RHEL 5 or 6 instead as your Linux license server machine.
• 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 Flexera FNP 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.
  Additionally, we also recommend you to 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.
• On the Linux platform, PRODUCT_NAME_LICENSE_FILE needs to be correctly specified before starting  Device Modeling MQA. Without that being set correctly,  Device Modeling MQA would not start.
• 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 2014.01 and 11.9.0.0 or earlier when run at the same time.
• The "Check-in failed" message occurs in the license activity log occasionally can be ignored; the license mentioned in this message is actually properly returned.
• License Setup Wizard does not remove any previous user-configured FLEX Windows License Service installed 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\Keysight\EEsof_License_Tools\bin to invoke the lmtools utility. The lmtools utility window is displayed.
  • 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  Device Modeling MQA 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).
• If a license server is configured with two license versions, that is, version 2.8 and 2.9 node-locked license files, the license server may crash.
  Workaround: You should combine the two license files into one file, instead of using them separately.
• For LSF style distributed simulations, in case of windows, ensure that the PATH 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.
• If Device Modeling MQA does not start after you reboot your 64-bit Windows computer, and a license denial message is displayed, then it might be caused by a spurious registry entry. Check to see if registry entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FLEXlm License Manager\EEsof EDA License Server exists; if it does, remove it and restart  Device Modeling MQA.
• 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.