austriamicrosystems releases high-voltage CMOS, high-voltage Flash and RF multi project wafer services schedule for foundry customers

UNTERPREMSTAETTEN, AUSTRIA: austriamicrosystems’ Full Service Foundry business unit released its further expanded fast and cost-efficient IC prototyping service, known as Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) or shuttle run, with an even more extensive schedule in 2012. The prototyping service, which combines several designs from different customers onto a single wafer, offers significant cost advantages for foundry customers as the costs for wafers and masks are shared among a number of different shuttle participants.

austriamicrosystems’ best-in-class MPW service includes the whole range of 0.18µm and 0.35µm specialty processes. In order to provide leading analog semiconductor process technology, manufacturing and services, austriamicrosystems now offers four MPW runs in the 0.18µm CMOS (C18) process as well as four MPW runs in its advanced 0.18µm High-Voltage CMOS (H18) technology.

The H18 process technology is based on IBM’s industry proven 0.18µm CMOS process CMOS7RF and offers industry-first RF (Radio Frequency) integration and high density SoC (System on a Chip) capability. It is perfectly suited for applications such as smart sensors, sensor interface devices, smart meters, industrial and building controls and LED lighting control in the automotive, industrial and medical markets.

For the 0.35µm specialty processes, which are based on the 0.35µm CMOS process transferred from TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), a total of 15 runs are offered in 2012: austriamicrosystems' 0.35µm High-Voltage CMOS process family with a 20V CMOS option -- which is ideally suited for power management products and display drivers, a 50V CMOS process -- which has been optimized for automotive and industrial applications, and a 120V module -- which meets the requirements of sensor and sensor interface chips in high-voltage applications.

The advanced High-Voltage CMOS process with Embedded Flash functionality adds to austriamicrosystems’ MPW service portfolio. The CMOS compatible 0.35µm Silicon-Germanium BiCMOS technology (S35) enables RF circuit designs with an operating frequency of up to 7 GHz combined with high-density digital parts on one single ASIC.

Overall austriamicrosystems will offer almost 150 MPW start dates in 2012, enabled by long lasting cooperation with organizations such as CMP-TIMA, Europractice, Fraunhofer IIS and Mosis. Japanese customers may now participate via our new MPW program partner Toppan Technical Design Center Co., Ltd (TDC). Located in Tokyo, TDC is acting as a local foundry service provider for austriamicrosystems and will provide Japanese foundry customers with direct access to MPW service. The complete schedule for 2012 has now been released.

To take advantage of the MPW service, austriamicrosystems’ foundry customers deliver their completed GDSII-data at specific dates and receive untested packaged samples or dies within a short lead-time of typically eight weeks for CMOS and 10 weeks for 0.35µm High-Voltage CMOS, SiGe-BiCMOS and Embedded Flash processes. All 0.35µm MPW runs will be manufactured at austriamicrosystems’ state-of-the-art 8 inch wafer fab in Austria.

All process technologies are supported by the well-known HIT-Kit, the austriamicrosystems industry benchmark process design kit based on Cadence, Mentor Graphics or Agilent ADS design environments. The HIT-Kit comes complete with fully silicon-qualified standard cells, periphery cells and general purpose analog cells such as comparators, operational amplifiers, low power A/D and D/A converters.

Custom analog and RF devices, physical verification rule sets for Assura and Calibre as well as excellently characterized circuit simulation models enable rapid design starts of complex high performance mixed-signal ICs. In addition to standard prototype services, austriamicrosystems also offers analog IP blocks, a memory (RAM/ROM) generation service and packaging services in ceramic or plastic.