Powering management
Intersil Corporation and Tower Semiconductor have announced they will work together to develop a new high-performance power management speciality process technology platform. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed by the companies which shall be followed by a formal agreement.
The multi-year agreement will combine Tower’s technology with Intersil’s design and process technology capabilities to provide Intersil with a powerful and innovative platform, accelerating its power management product growth to address next-generation requirements. Intersil will utilize the platform to manufacture its leading-edge power ICs in Tower’s state-of-the-art200mm facility in Migdal Ha’emek, Israel.
According to Gartner’s Forecast for Power Management ICs Worldwide, 2007 -2012, power management devices will continue to be the fastest growth segment of any analogue IC category. iSuppli reports the power management IC market is expected to grow from $10.3 Billion in 2009 to $14.6 Billion in 2013, a CAGR of 9.1%.
Intersil already has an established relationship with Jazz Semiconductor, Tower’s wholly owned subsidiary, utilizing previous generation power management platforms. This new collaboration will enable further engineering relationships across a wide set of process technologies that could bring additional business to both companies.
Tower’s Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) power process offering is highly modular and includes a unique Y-Flash zero mask adder non-volatile memory (NVM) solution.Combined with Intersil’s power management design and process capabilities, this new process will go beyond its base platform to specifically address the requirements of multiple Intersil product families including digital power, PWM controllers and PMICs for a broad set of end user markets such as consumer, computing, communications, industrial and automotive.
”We are very pleased to extend our long standing partnership to jointly develop a robust and innovative power management platform to address the next-generation needs of power products,” said Sagar Pushpala, Senior Vice President Worldwide Operations and Technology, at Intersil. “Tower provides best-in-class BCD process technology which enables Intersil to offer highly-differentiated power management and non-volatile memory solutions.”
Commenting on the signing of the MOU, Russell Ellwanger, Tower CEO said,“Intersil offers quality, high-performance analogue ICs and we are excited that a proven leader in power management has chosen us as their partner and placed their trust in our technology and roadmap to co-develop and manufacture their next-generation power platform. Together, we will enable faster design cycles and cost-effective designs which will be very advantageous for Intersil’s customers. We look forward to a fruitful and long-term relationship."
