3 June 2014

TowerJazz releases enhanced RF SOI CMOS and SiGe PDKs for Agilent's ADS software

Specialty foundry TowerJazz (which has fabrication plants at Tower Semiconductor Ltd in Migdal Haemek, Israel, and at its subsidiaries Jazz Semiconductor Inc in Newport Beach, CA, USA and TowerJazz Japan Ltd) has announced the availability of enhanced RF silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS and high-speed silicon-germanium (SiGe) process design kits (PDKs) for its 0.18μm process technology.

The kits were developed for use with Agilent Technologies’ Advanced Design System (ADS) software and target a wide range of analog markets including front-end modules (FEMs) for mobile phones, tablets and WiFi terminals, fiber-optic connections for data centers and network infrastructure, radar for automotive collision avoidance, and other high-frequency applications.

The enhanced PDKs enable reductions in die size and bill of materials via new advanced inductor-based passive components (e.g. significant area savings are possible when using solenoids which provide 250% more inductance per area compared with regular inductors). The new PDKs also improve simulation accuracy for die packaged in thin form factors and allow the simulation of thermal effects across chips that are critical in many of the targeted applications.

In addition to inductors, the PDKs now support scalable solenoids (series inductors), balun/transformer devices and improved model capabilities to account for substrate thinning and flip-chip packaging effects. Ultra-thin substrates of 100μm or less are common in the assembly of FEM chips, while flip-chip stand-off distances between the chip surface and the circuit laminate can be on the order of 80μm.

The Electro-Thermal Simulator in ADS from electronic design automation software supplier Agilent EES of EDA has been enabled for high-speed SiGe BiCMOS technology, allowing designers to simulate the impact of thermal coupling across the chip. Thermal effects in SiGe designs can cause degradation in both performance and reliability. This new capability allows designers using the ADS PDK for TowerJazz’s SBC18HA process to ‘design around’ the thermal effects by optimizing design parameters in conjunction with layout modifications.

TowerJazz and Agilent are demonstrating the PDKs in booth #1328 at the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2014) conference in Tampa, FL (3-5 June) and in booth #1301 at the Design Automation (DAC 2014) conference in San Francisco, CA (2-4 June).

Complementing TowerJazz’s RF SOI and SiGe BiCMOS technologies with Agilent’s design enablement capability will speed customers’ time to market, reckons Ori Galzur, VP of the TowerJazz VLSI Design Center. “We constantly strive to provide our customers a clear advantage in bringing analog products to market by offering the best process technology together with a sophisticated design infrastructure,” he adds.

“Our mutual customers can now leverage RF critical functionalities like cutting-edge inductor design capability and electro-thermal analysis in TowerJazz’s leading RF process technologies,” says Juergen Hartung, RFIC marketing and foundry program manager of Agilent’s EEs of EDA. “Based on a full 3D thermal solver tightly integrated with ADS circuit simulation and IC layout environment, this solution provides accurate ’thermally aware’ simulation results, including steady-state, transient and envelope analyses, that account for thermal coupling between devices as well as heat transfer through the die and packaging.”

Tags: TowerJazz SiGe Agilent EDA

Visit: www.towerjazz.com

Visit: www.agilent.com/find/eesof-ads2014