Exclusive agreement targets 180nm UltraCMOS process
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Peregrine Semiconductor has announced an exclusive joint development agreement with IBM for the development and manufacture of what it describes as 'the industry's highest performance' rf CMOS process.
When fully qualified, Peregrine's next generation UltraCMOS silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) process technology will be manufactured in the jointly developed 180nm process at IBM's 8in semiconductor manufacturing facility in Burlington, Vermont.
Peregrine's UltraCMOS technology is designed to deliver high levels of rf performance and monolithic integration for applications such as the rf front end of mobile phones and multimode, multiband mobile wireless devices. It is also suitable for broadband communications including 4G LTE equipment and base stations and space satellite systems.
According to Peregrine, this development marks the first commercial use of 8in wafer processing for silicon-on-sapphire process, a technology that incorporates an ultra-thin layer of silicon on a highly insulating sapphire substrate. Mark Miscione, vice president and chief strategist for technology solutions at Peregrine Semiconductor believes it to be a milestone which will drive the next decade of UltraCMOS engineering.
"The realisation of our 180nm UltraCMOS process on 8in sapphire wafers is a very important phase of our long term process development strategy," commented Miscione. "Throughout the last several years, we have invested significant capital and effort with our partners to strengthen the overall SOS supply chain and improve the economics of the base sapphire substrate material. This has been accomplished by the global acceptance of SOS technology, as evidenced by the more than 600million UltraCMOS rf ICs shipped from our foundries within the past few years. These improvements have also been fueled by the tremendous volume of sapphire now being used by the rapidly expanding LED lighting industry."
According to Miscione, migration to 8in wafers will ease the evolution of the process to advanced 180, 130 and 90nm nodes. He believes it also provides access to advanced manufacturing toolsets and enables significantly expanded digital integration capability.
The first 180nm UltraCMOS rf ICs have sampled and commercial production release is expected in 2011. Initial product roadmaps include configurable rf cellular front ends in the form of high power rf switches, tunable components, and power amplifiers.
