This week at the 2005 FSA conference, Jazz Semiconductor announced the availability of process design kits for its 0.13-micron RF CMOS process, CA13, followed by silicon germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS early next year. According to Jazz, the 0.13 micron CMOS platform is a low-cost alternative for applications that do not require the expensive copper interconnect of traditional 0.13 micron CMOS implementations for the back-end. The foundry service provider is targeting analog and RF companies that have an increasing need for low power digital integration with high performance analog and RF circuitry.

Regarded as the company's third-generation modular process, it allows circuit designers the flexibility to choose process features that will best differentiate their products by optimizing design performance, manufacturing cycle time, and cost. Some of the target applications include multistandard TV tuners and integrated demodulators, cellular and wireless LAN transceivers with digital power control integration and virtually any other design requiring RF or analog system on-chip integration. The company has focused on enabling the integration of key analog and RF functions by using an aluminum metal interconnect scheme to deliver the same RF performance and low-power consumption of conventional 0.13-micron technology while maintaining the lower cost and reduced complexity of the familiar aluminum based approach without requiring expensive copper (Cu) interconnect layers. The Jazz platform is further differentiated by the addition of a triple well for RF isolation, 5.6fF/µm2 MIM capacitors, varactors, low and high value precision resistors, and thick metal inductors for improved RF and analog performance. By comparison to Cu interconnect, the tradeoff is 20% in digital density and 5% in speed.

The CA13 platform reuses key modules from Jazz's 0.35 µm and 0.18 µm platforms, provides six layers of metal, and can include high-performance modules such as SiGe NPNs, vertical PNPs, high voltage FETs and non-volatile memory. Designers can use the Jazz 0.13-micron process platform to integrate more high density digital content with existing products in parallel with scaling the analog portion of the chip at 0.35 µm, 0.25 µm or 0.18 µm process nodes.

The rollout of the CA13 platform precedes the release of the Jazz SBC13 silicon germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technology that is based on the RF CMOS process. The SBC13 technology includes a low cost, 4 mask, SiGe bipolar NPN to combine all of the features of CA13 with the performance advantages of SiGe at low additional complexity. Design kits for SBC13 will be available in the first quarter of 2006.

"With our 0.13 micron process platform, we are serving analog and RF companies that have an increasing need for low power digital integration with high performance analog and RF circuitry," said Paul Kempf, chief technology and strategy officer, Jazz Semiconductor. "The CA13 process and its follow on SiGe BiCMOS version, SBC13, continue to underscore our commitment to enable low cost, highly integrated analog and RF ICs for next generation products."