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austriamicrosystems Announces New 12V process Option for its Advanced 0.35µm SiGe-BiCMOS Technology

April 01, 2007 by Jeff Shepard

austriamicrosystems AG announced a further expansion of its 0.35µm SiGe-BiCMOS (S35) process technology with the availability of a set of additional 12V devices. This new extension allows the integration of 2.7, 3.3, 5 and 12V devices on a single chip without any process changes.

The new 12V devices are a modular extension of austriamicrosystems’ 0.35µm SiBe-BiCMOS process with 100% compatibility to the base CMOS process which allows the re-use of IP Blocks from pure CMOS designs or existing designs on austriamicrosystems’ 0.35µm SiBe-BiCMOS process. New SiGe-BiCMOS designs utilizing the 12V devices can be started immediately and are supported by austriamicrosystems’ foundry services like MPW runs allowing fast prototyping, engineering runs and high volume production in its state-of-the-art 200mm wafer fabrication facility.

The new devices allow high operating voltages for advanced high frequency operations, in particular NPNs with a BVceo of 14V and ft/fmax of 15/32 GHz and a RF-PLDMOS (P-type lateral extended MOS transistor) with a BVds of 18V and ft/fmax of 11/28GHz. The enhanced SiGe-BiCMOS technology with complementary high voltage devices is intended to be a highly competitive solution for fabless design houses and IDMs developing products such as line drivers for xDSL modems, Ethernet applications, power amplifiers and broadband data transfer products.

"Offering 12V devices in 0.35µm SiGe-BiCMOS technology strengthens our leading position in the RF arena and as an analog foundry service supplier," states Peter Gasteiner, Senior Vice President and General Manager Full Service Foundry. "With these new 12V devices we extend the range of potential applications for our SiGe-BiCMOS technology and therefore provide our customers a competitive solution for requirements which cannot be realized by any RF CMOS process technologies."

For its advanced SiGe-BiCMOS process, austriamicrosystems delivers its industry benchmark design environment ("HIT-Kit"), which comes complete with device generators, DRC rule set, I/O libraries, special utilities optimized for RF product design and excellent characterized circuit simulation models. The new devices are available as an add-on to the current version of the HIT-Kit.