Jazz And Mirics Partner To Deliver Poly-Band Tuner
The MSI001 is a universal broadcast receiver that enables designers of mobile phones, portable media players, and PDAs to add mobile broadcast reception to support any global standard. Samples of the MSI001, manufactured in the first quarter of this year, were based on first-pass silicon from Jazz. By leveraging SBC35, Jazz Semiconductor's 0.35-micron SiGe BiCMOS process platform, and utilizing its analog and RF design flow and modeling infrastructure, Mirics engineers were able to achieve results quickly and achieve functional, first-pass silicon.
Jazz Semiconductor's SBC35 is a low-power solution for consumer, wireless, and networking applications. Designers have can use any combination of three bipolar (NPN) transistors, each of which provides a different optimization for power and speed. Offering a transistor with a peak Ft of 62GHz, SBC35 also includes 3.3 volt CMOS, deep trench isolation, lateral PNP transistors, MIM and MIS capacitors, high-performance varactors, poly and nwell resistors, and high-Q inductors. Other available SBC35 options include a triple-well, high performance vertical PNP, three or four layers of metal, and a thick top-metal. SBC35 is part of Jazz's portfolio of SiGe technology targeting wireless, consumer, and wireline products that includes a high performance 0.18-micron node (SBC18) supporting speeds of up to 200 GHz and a recently announced ultra low power 0.13-micron node (SBL13) supporting high levels of integration.
The MSI001 chip is capable of receiving a vast range of digital broadcast standards including DVB-H, T-DMB, ISDB-T, DAB-IP, MediaFlo, DAB, DRM and AM/FM. Mirics also designed the chip to be configured for the reception of other standards, or unknown future standards, i.e. the forthcoming Chinese MDTV standards, without any cost or performance penalty. The device provides coverage for all major broadcast bands ranging from 100KHz to 1.9GHz (covering LW/MW/SW, L-Band and VHF Bands II, III, and UHF Bands IV and V).
"By utilizing Jazz's 0.35-micron SiGe BiCMOS process, the production cycle for the MSI001 was fast and easy to facilitate, an important factor in the fast growing mobile broadcast receiver market," said Simon Atkinson, CEO of Mirics. "The combination of Jazz's advanced process technology and design flow support, with our strong silicon development team and leading RF technology, enabled us to develop a tuner that is unmatched in performance and power consumption and we are able to offer it at a very competitive price."
"Our 0.35 micron SiGe BiCMOS process has been helping our customers achieve the demanding performance specifications and cost targets of wireless and wireline transceivers and is now being increasingly adopted for tuner applications," said Marco Racanelli, vice president of technology and engineering at Jazz Semiconductor. "In addition to providing strong performance, its proven design environment is helping customers achieve first pass success in these demanding applications, speeding their time to market."
SOURCE: Jazz Semiconductor