austriamicrosystems
(SIX:AMS) business unit Full Service Foundry expands its fast and cost-efficient
ASIC prototyping service, known as Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) or shuttle run,
in 2010 with a more extensive schedule. The service which combines several designs
from different customers onto one wafer offers significant cost advantages for
foundry customers as the costs for wafer 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. As part of the commitment
to provide leading analog semiconductor process technology, manufacturing and
services, austriamicrosystems now offers four prototyping runs for its advanced
0.18µm High-Voltage CMOS technology H18. The H18 process technology is
based on IBM’s industry proven 0.18µm CMOS process CMOS7RF and is
perfectly suited for smart power management ICs in handsets, PDAs, portable
media players and other mobile devices. In addition, four MPW runs for foundry
customers are available in the CMOS7RF base technology.
For the 0.35µm processes which are based on the 0.35µm CMOS process
transferred from TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) a total of
fifteen runs are offered in 2010. The 0.35µm High-Voltage CMOS process
family with a 20V CMOS option, ideally suited for power management products
and display drivers, a 50V CMOS process, optimized for automotive and industrial
applications, and a 120V module optimized for sensor and sensor interface chips
serve customers’ demand for high-voltage applications and products. 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 10 GHz combined with high-density digital parts on one single
ASIC.
Overall austriamicrosystems will offer more than 150 MPW start dates in 2010,
enabled by long lasting co-operations with organizations such as CMP-TIMA, Europractice,
Fraunhofer IIS and Mosis. The complete schedule for 2010 has now been released
and detailed start dates per process are available on the web at http://asic.austriamicrosystems.com/MPW
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 8 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 produced at austriamicrosystems’ state-of-the-art
8 inch wafer fab in Austria.
All process technologies are supported by the well-known HIT-Kit, an 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.