- News
16 November 2017
Resonant signs fourth foundry partner agreement, adding to fabless filter model eco-system
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Resonant Inc of Goleta, CA, USA (a designer of filters for radio-frequency front-ends that specializes in difficult bands and complex requirements) has signed its fourth non-captive Infinite Synthesized Network (ISN) foundry agreement with an established surface acoustic wave (SAW) foundry serving the RF market.
Resonant says that the new agreement increases the robustness of its fabless SAW eco-system, offering more choices for customers in the emerging module market. The new vendor provides full foundry services and capabilities as a pure-play gallium arsenide (GaAs) foundry, and will be able to leverage its GaAs customers by offering SAW filters. The firm is part of a new business group of a tier-1 complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fab company.
“This agreement with our fourth foundry partner further validates our fabless SAW eco-system model,” says CEO George Holmes. “We continue to expand the offerings for our clients through this unique business model, which is fast tracking our expansion plans and increasing value for our shareholders,” he adds.
“Moving to a fabless business model revolutionized CMOS, allowing a stable supply chain and increasing competition dramatically,” Holmes continues. “Resonant is enabling a similar model for RF filters, which have become the key strategic element of the RF front-end.”
Resonant claims that it can create designs for difficult bands and complex requirements that have the potential to be manufactured for half the cost and developed in half the time of traditional approaches. A large suite of proprietary mathematical methods, software design tools and network synthesis techniques enables it to explore a much bigger set of possible solutions and quickly derive the better ones, the firm adds. These improved filters still use existing manufacturing methods (i.e. SAW) and can perform as well as those using higher-cost methods (i.e. BAW), claims Resonant. While most of the industry designs SAW filters using a coupling-of-modes model, Resonant uses circuit models and physical models. Circuit models are computationally much faster, and physical models are highly accurate, based entirely on fundamental material properties and dimensions. Resonant claims that its method delivers excellent predictability, enabling achievement of the desired product performance in roughly half as many turns through the fab. Because Resonant’s models are fundamental, integration with its foundry and fab customers is eased because its models speak the ‘fab language’ of basic material properties and dimensions, the firm adds.
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