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Process development

Peregrine Semiconductor announced a new 0.25micron UltraCMOS silicon-on-sapphire process technology for its foundry service.
Peregrine Semiconductor announced a new 0.25micron UltraCMOS silicon-on-sapphire process technology for its foundry service.

The company supplies of high-performance RF CMOS and mixed-signal communications ICs. Two new processes have been developed - GA and GC. These complement the existing 0.50micron FA and FC processes. The GA/GC transistor performance includes an F(max) of more than 100GHz. The initial 0.25micron offering will be available on a quarterly basis beginning Q4 2004 on multi-project runs (MPRs).

Peregrine's foundry engineering group provides design support, including a complete Cadence-based front-end to back-end process design kit (PDK) at no cost, under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Customers may purchase a 3x3mm tile area on a shared mask set and receive a minimum of 50 sawn dice.

Peregrine's RF CMOS ICs are aimed at market segments such as wireless infrastructure and mobile wireless, global positioning (GPS), optical, broadband, and military/space applications. UltraCMOS is a proprietary, patented variation of generic silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology.

Peregrine's process is the first commercially qualified use of the company's Ultra-Thin-Silicon (UTSi) on sapphire substrates. Significant performance advantages are claimed over competing processes such as GaAs, SiGe BiCMOS and bulk silicon CMOS in applications where RF performance, low power and integration are paramount.

UMC claims the foundry industry's most advanced 0.18micron embedded high voltage technology. This process targets the growing portable liquid crystal display (LCD) market, and can supply the different voltages required for the gate driver, source driver, controller and 4micron2 ultra dense SRAM cells.

An additional non-volatile memory (NVM) feature, called Multiple Times Programmable (MTP) memory, can also be added to the process with the addition of only one extra mask step. MTP allows customers to perform SRAM redundancy repair and fine tune each IC to ensure identical behaviour throughout the wafer, potentially reducing overall cost and time to market.

The MTP also gives customers the added flexibility to configure/reconfigure ICs for different applications since the NVM can be reprogrammed. High voltage technology is a requirement for LCD products to turn on the transistors that are used to drive applications such as cell phone displays.

UMCJ, UMC's affiliate foundry company in Japan, has been producing customer 0.18micron 20V high voltage products since the beginning of the year. UMC expects pilot production of customer LCD chips using 0.18micron 32V technology to begin by the end of 2004.

AMD says that it is achieving a smooth transition to 90nm manufacturing and has shipped low-power 90nm Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processors for thin and light notebooks (previously codenamed "Oakville") for revenue. The company also claims that it is on track with plans to deliver 90nm dual-core products on a 90nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process mid-next year. The SOI process is designed to provide higher performance, lower power transistors.

"We promised 90nm revenue shipments in the third quarter, and today we're delivering on that promise," says Dirk Meyer, executive vice president of the Computation Products group at AMD. The 90nm AMD Athlon 64 processors for desktop systems are expected to ship later this quarter, followed by 90nm AMD Opteron processor shipments later this year.

Jazz Semiconductor has produced a complete design platform for its new 200GHz (Ft and Fmax) SiGe BiCMOS (SBC18H2) process. Target markets are low power wireless and high speed networking designs. Leading customers and university researchers have validated the key circuit building blocks for next generation products, including 60GHz wireless data and collision avoidance radar.

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