MOSIS, a provider of low-cost prototyping and small volume production services for custom ICs, has teamed up with ePIXfab, the European Silicon Photonics support center providing low-cost prototyping services for photonic ICs. The partnership gives MOSIS’ customers access to imec’s state-of-the-art fully integrated silicon photonics processes and Tyndall’s advanced silicon photonics packaging technology. Co-founded by …

Dr. Jean-Pierre Colinge received the 2012 IEEE Andrew S. Grove award at the last ESSDERC-ESSCIRC Conference, for his “contributions to silicon-on-insulator devices and technology.” One of the industry’s most prestigious, the Grove Award is sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society, recognizing “outstanding contributions to solid-state devices and technology.” As noted in the EDS Newsletter, …

IEEE SOI-3D-Subthreshold Microelectronics Technology Unified Conference Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa, Monterey, California October 7th thru 10th, 2013 In 2013, an exciting new event named IEEE S3S will take place in Monterey, CA. This industry-wide event is founded upon the co-location of two IEEE conferences that have been at the leading edge of CMOS …

Fully-depleted transistor technologies, both planar and fin-type, are now in the mainstream for product designs. One of the many interesting topics in the new 3D FinFET technology is the approach to isolation. In this article, key elements that differentiate junction-isolated (bulk) and dielectric-isolated (SOI) FinFET transistors are discussed, encompassing aspects of process integration, device design, …

DARPA reports that a team of researchers at the University of Southern California and Columbia University has achieved output power levels of nearly 0.5W at 45 GHz with a 45nm SOI CMOS chip. This world record result for CMOS-based power amplifiers doubles output power compared to the next best reported CMOS millimeter-wave power amplifier. The …

Specialty foundry Altis Semiconductor will be a foundry partner for the IBM 180nm SOI technology. ALTIS will deliver high volume products starting Q2 2013 and will secure capacity increase for 2014 and beyond to address the IBM forecasted demand.  This foundry agreement addresses the next generation of consumer products, including as an example, the RF/SOI …

Peregrine has announced the latest version of UltraCMOS®  process technology—Semiconductor Technology Platform 8 (STeP8), which the company says enables unmatched performance in RF Front End ICs. STeP8 technology shows a 36% improvement in Ron Coff  performance over STeP5 technology announced just one year ago—dramatically improving the linearity, insertion loss, and isolation capabilities of Peregrine’s RFIC …

Specialty foundry TowerJazz says its latest RF SOI technology offers the industry’s best figure of merit for antenna switch and antenna tuning applications with Ron-Coff of only 217fs. The technology is driving FEM market share, quickly replacing GaAs implementations and has already been adopted by multiple customers worldwide with over 50 separate designs taped-in with …

RDA Microelectronics has begun volume shipments of its RDALN16 GPS LNA for use in Samsung’s 3G handsets deployed in Europe and emerging markets worldwide, such as South America. Developed on SOI, RDA’s GPS LNA is a high gain, low noise, small size amplifier ideally suited for GPS, Galileo and GLONASS applications in 2G and 3G …

Skyworks announced that its industry-leading Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) switching technology is now being used by European, Japanese, Korean and North American car manufacturers for advanced infotainment systems. Specifically, Skyworks’ solid state technology is enabling seamless low noise and broadband switching between audio, Blu-ray/DVD, navigation, cell phone and vehicle security display inputs as well as a variety …