TowerJazz and TLi Korea collaborate on sensor ICs

JAPAN & KOREA: TowerJazz announced collaboration with TLi (Technology Leaders & Innovators), a fabless company that designs non-memory integrated circuits (ICs) focused on timing controllers and driver ICs on TFT-LCD panel modules.

TLI has developed an acceleration sensor control IC and proximity illumination sensor IC based on TowerJazz’s advanced 0.18um CMOS technology which enables TLi to provide local offerings to mobile phone suppliers in Korea where the market leaders are located.

As of 2012, the worldwide mobile phone market was $1.7 billion and 43 percent of this was attributed to smart phones with acceleration sensor control ICs and proximity and illumination sensor ICs. The portion of smart phones with these ICs is expected to grow steadily and TLi is targeting this fast growing market with two of its products utilizing TowerJazz’s process. A mass production is expected to start in Q3, 2013.

The acceleration sensor market is mostly dominated by a few major foreign companies, however in January of this year, TLi succeeded in developing an acceleration sensor control IC and a proximity illumination sensor IC in Korea. These products are the first released from the very close collaboration between TowerJazz and TLi.

By utilizing the advanced features of TowerJazz’s 0.18um CMOS process, TLi realized accurate modeling as well as flash memory without mask adder for its acceleration sensor control IC and succeeded in realizing the sensing block without expensive color filtering for its proximity illumination sensor IC.