News

AWR of El Segundo, CA, USA and RF front-end component maker TriQuint Semiconductor Inc of Hillsboro, OR, USA have launched Project JumpStart to offer (for a limited time) first-time customers and start-ups a low-cost introduction to the design and fabrication of gallium arsenide microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs).

The project provides designers with an affordable, low-risk means of bringing wireless design prototypes to market using AWR’s electronic design automation (EDA) tools and TriQuint’s pseudomorphic high electronic mobility transistor (pHEMT) foundry process.

Project Jumpstart includes free process design kits (PDKs), a free 90-day lease for AWR’s flagship high-frequency design software, Microwave Office design suite, and a reduced-rate prototype development quickturn (PDQ) shared-wafer foundry run using TriQuint’s TQPED 0.5µm pHEMT process.

AWR says that its Microwave Office software encompasses all the tools essential for high-frequency design: linear and non-linear circuit simulators, electromagnetic (EM) analysis tools, integrated schematic and layout, statistical design capabilities, and parametric cell libraries with built-in design-rule check (DRC).

TriQuint’s TQPED is a 0.5µm optical gate enhancement and depletion pHEMT process that features three thick global metal interconnect layers and is suited to building switches, low-noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, and integrated transceivers. The three metal layers are encapsulated in a high-performance interlayer dielectric and offer advantages for designers in its ability to provide a high level of wiring flexibility and simplicity of plastic packaging, the firm claims.

“Many well-established wireless products were at one time nothing more than ideas waiting to be turned into working solution,” says Mike Peters, director of marketing for TriQuint’s Commercial Foundry. “This joint AWR/TriQuint program offers companies with limitless ideas but limited resources an opportunity to bring an idea to life,” he adds.

“Project JumpStart is a terrific incentive for MMIC designers to experience the unique combination of AWR’s powerful tools and TriQuint’s exceptional foundry services, with no risk and at virtually no cost,” says AWR’s VP of marketing Sherry Hess.

Search: TriQuint GaAs MMICs

Visit: www.triquint.com/rf

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