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Shared wafer service on IBM’s 130nm 8WL process makes high-performance RF chip fabrication affordable

11th March 2007

EDA Solutions Limited

ES Admin

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MOSIS, a provider of low-cost prototyping and small volume production services for custom ASICs, announces prototype and low volume fabrication access to IBM's fourth generation foundry technology, 8WL, the 130 nanometer (nm) silicon germanium (SiGe) bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) process. The process uses an emitter width of just 120nm and can be used to produce devices with an Ft of 100GHz. It creates low power devices at lower cost than GaAs technology and has been developed to reduce the cost of mobile consumer products, advance high-bandwidth wireless communications (60GHz Wi-Fi), and enable innovative new applications such as collision-avoidance automobile radar (24GHz and 70GHz).

MOSIS is scheduling multi-project wafer (MPW) runs based on the 8WL process in August and December this year. The organisation’s MPW service means that users only pay proportionally for the actual area of masks and wafers that their designs occupy. The service is ideal for prototyping and for producing up to 1000 samples for either in-house or early customer evaluation.

The 8WL BiCMOS SiGe process supports metal-insulator-metal (MiM) capacitors and a thick-copper metal layer (the OL layer) can be used to make inductors. Supply voltages are 1.2 V for the core and 2.5/3.3 V for I/O.

Depending on the silicon area occupied by the device, the MPW service can be accessed from less than 10% of the price of a dedicated run, for a typical sample quantity of 40 chips. The final cost depends upon the nature of the design. MOSIS also offers packaging and test services.
The MOSIS service is available in Europe exclusively through EDA Solutions.