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UltraCMOS™ Process Technology Overview
The global
wireless communications industry has entered the new millennium. The need for
products and components that are smaller, more efficient and less expensive is
greater than any time ever before. Monolithic integration has come of age.
Using its patented UltraCMOS technology, Peregrine has mastered the technique of processing Ultra-Thin Silicon (UTSi®) circuitry on an insulating dielectric sapphire substrate. With this technology,
Peregrine is producing integrated circuits (ICs) that are expanding customer
options by providing major advances in speed and power at a lower cost.
The UltraCMOS process is a patented
silicon-on-sapphire technology
(SOS) that has for years been
recognized as a technically superior semiconductor vehicle reserved for highly
specialized military and space projects. SOS was thought to be impossible to
manufacture in commercial volumes at a reasonable cost. Overcoming these
challenges without sacrificing the inherent benefits of the technology took
several years of research and development, all now protected by dozens of
patents. The UltraCMOS process is the industry’s
first and only commercially qualified use of Ultra-Thin-Silicon (UTSi®) on
sapphire substrates enabling the combination of high-performance RF, mixed-signal,
passive elements, nonvolatile memory and digital functions on a single device.
This monolithic integration provides significant
performance advantages over competing mixed-signal processes such as GaAs, SiGe,
BiCMOS and bulk silicon CMOS in applications where RF performance, low power
and integration are paramount. Additionally,
because UltraCMOS devices are fabricated in standard high-volume CMOS
facilities, products benefit from the fundamental reliability, cost
effectiveness, high yields, scalability and integration of CMOS, while
achieving the peak performance levels historically expected from SiGe and GaAs.
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