Nujira selects TowerJazz as foundry partner for new envelope tracking IC

CAMBRIDGE, UK & MIGDAL HAEMEK, ISRAEL: Nujira Ltd, the world’s leader in Envelope Tracking technology, and TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry leader, announced that Nujira has selected TowerJazz as its foundry partner for its recently announced Envelope Tracking (ET) integrated circuit (IC) for mobile handsets.

The NCT-L1100 is Nujira’s first chip in its Coolteq.L product family of High Accuracy Tracking ET modulators designed to significantly increase RF power amplifier (PA) efficiencies in mobile handsets. The new chip also marks Nujira’s shift to a fabless business model to address the high volume, global smartphone and mobile device market.

“Our new IC for mobile handsets is hugely significant for the business and strategically, so it was absolutely critical that we selected the right foundry partner,” commented Tim Haynes, CEO, Nujira. “TowerJazz’s processes offered us the ideal combination of power management and high performance analog technology to meet the challenging requirements of ET ICs. The TowerJazz process is a superb platform on which to base future integration of Envelope Tracking, RF PA and switch technologies to provide the industry with fully monolithic front end solutions.”

Patrick McNamee, Nujira’s VP of Silicon Operations added: “As the world’s largest specialist analog foundry, TowerJazz offers us the modeling expertise, capacity and security of supply we need to address the high volume smartphone market, and we welcome them as a key part of our world class supply chain.” Nujira’s NCT-L1100 is fabricated in TowerJazz’s well proven 0.18 micron CMOS process and takes advantage of the years of careful analog design and process modeling.

“Nujira’s technology has huge potential for the mobile handset market, so we are excited to be their partners and to be supporting them in the development of their Envelope Tracking ICs,” said Dr Marco Racanelli, senior VP and GM of RF and High Performance Analog Business Group. “With foundry capacity on three continents, TowerJazz offers a unique combination of specialty processes and wafer capacity, enabling high growth fabless IC companies like Nujira to rely on us as their silicon supplier.”

Nujira’s NCT-L1100 will be available in small footprint Wafer-level Chip Scale Package (WLCSP). Nujira provides platform chipset vendors with evaluation boards and engineering support for integration into reference designs for smartphones and data devices. The NCT-L1100 is sampling now to lead partners with general availability in Q4 2012.