Doing some reading on AMCC and here are the links for people trying to get up to speed.
Vitesse's 6 inch GaS wafers vs. AMCC SiGE
techweb.com
Rivals vow process duel in Sonet ICs
Loring Wirbel
Colorado Springs, Colo. - Traditional telecom IC rivals are turning up the heat in
their summer battle for 2.5- and 10-Gbit/second Sonet markets. As Vitesse
Semiconductor Inc. brings up the world's first commercial 6-
inch gallium arsenide fab here, competitor Applied Microcircuits Corp. is
expanding its CMOS and bipolar Sonet offerings and is readying plans to build
or buy silicon-germanium process technology.
The July fireworks are the latest twist in a decades-old debate about how far
silicon can intrude into the multi-GHz space formerly reserved for GaAs. By
using standard MESFET techniques and traditional CMOS manufacturing
equipment, Vitesse is out to prove that any mixed-signal circuit at 2 GHz and
above can be more cost-effective in GaAs than in silicon, particularly as wafers
move from 4 to 6 inches in diameter.
But Dave Rickey, president of Applied Microcircuits (AMCC, San Diego), said
that by planning for SiGe process technologies at its next fab,When will this facility be built the company will
have a mix of process options to carry it from tens of MHz to at least 40 GHz.
That kind of clout has the potential to extend applications to the Sonet OC-768
(40-Gbit/s) market.
The argument is far more than an academic dispute among process chauvinists.
The telecom market is ballooning to pull in more than standard Sonet and
asynchronous transfer mode chips at 2.5-(OC-48) and 10-Gbit (OC-192) rates.
OEMs are clamoring for specialized chip sets to handle packet-over-Sonet,
wavelength-division multiplexing interfaces for Sonet and proprietary interfaces
using Sonet speed hierarchies.
At Vitesse (Camarillo, Calif.), the size of the market opportunity in data
communications and telecommunications is beginning to dwarf all other
business. The ASICs for supercomputing applications that once defined
Vitesse's raison d'etre are now all but gone, with that market sector accounting
for less than 5 percent of the company's business. Per-pin tester chips for ATE
markets make up another 20 to 25 percent, but Vitesse president Lou
Tomasetta predicted that within three years, the company will be 85 percent
reliant on communication markets, making Vitesse for all practical purposes a
communications-IC company.
Process options
AMCC has experienced a similar ride in recent months and has outsourced
submicron CMOS Sonet designs to augment its own bipolar processes. But as
telecom backbone speeds exceed OC-48 rates, AMCC will need to plan for
new process options. Rickey said he has been a strong proponent of SiGe since
joining the company in February 1996, and he is planning on a SiGe processing
line for the company's next fab, likely to be built in San Diego's Sorrento Valley
area.
SiGe experienced a renaissance in interest in the early 1990s, primarily for RF
applications, as IBM Corp. teamed with Analog Devices Inc. to produce a
common suite of high-speed designs. After Analog Devices backed out of the
deal in 1993, IBM Microelectronics continued pursuing SiGe work for both
multi-GHz wireless and high-speed mixed-signal wireline designs. The company
reported new breakthroughs in production manufacturing at the end of 1997.
IBM is reported to be working with National Semiconductor Corp., Harris Corp.
and Tektronix Inc. on SiGe development, though its partners are saying little
about the nature of the work. When IBM acquired DSP specialist CommQuest
Inc. (Encinitas, Calif.), it made clear that SiGe would be applied to both the
baseband and IF/RF portions of CommQuest's Communication Application
Specific Processor (CASP) architecture.
Sources say AMCC is talking with IBM about possible joint SiGe work. Rickey
would not confirm that. But the AMCC president did say that internally
developed SiGe will be a part of AMCC's road map in any event, as a central
aspect of the company's play in broadband telecom markets.
Rickey said that AMCC has no intention of using SiGe in all-digital devices but
that the process will play a role in high-speed mixed-signal devices with very
large digital blocks, such as OC-192 transceivers incorporating some Sonet
frame-processing functions. Even at OC-48 speeds, SiGe could play a role in
mixing serializer/deserializer blocks with wave-division multiplexing (WDM)
front ends. That way, Rickey said, even if WDM at OC-48 speeds pushes out
the market for OC-192 chips, SiGe can play a role in both market sectors.
At last week's Analog and Mixed-Signal Applications Conference in San Jose,
Calif., P.K. Vasudev, director of analog ASICs at National Instruments Inc.
(Austin, Texas), suggested that IBM's advances in SiGe over the last year
proved that the process technology has turned the corner, not just for
high-frequency analog but also for a wide variety of applications with large
blocks of digital circuits.
Vasudev, who oversaw the development of five generations of submicron
CMOS at Sematech, said that SiGe "is ready to be a mainstream contender."
Even if the process costs more per wafer than standard bipolar or CMOS, he
said, the advantages in performance and device integration are "well worth it.
This can place silicon directly against gallium arsenide in a much wider range of
applications."
But Vitesse's Tomasetta asserted that the move to production volumes of 6-inch
wafers in Colorado Springs gives SiGe advocates a tougher target to hit.
"Look, the entire industry is FET-driven, not bipolar transistor-driven, and not
reliant on specialized mask steps," Tomasetta said. "The big advantage we have
is that our competitors don't believe we can bring up yield fast enough in the
new fab. But we're past the prototype phase for Fab 2. We expect to realize
$15 million to $20 million in revenue in the current quarter from products coming
out of Colorado."
The fab relies on standard equipment familiar in silicon fabs, including a mix of
I-line and deep-UV steppers, standard Applied Materials metal-deposition
equipment and chemical-vapor-deposition equipment used primarily for
annealing. Bob Cutter, vice president and general manager of the Colorado
Springs fab, said the facility was designed to use single-wafer-processing
cluster-tool equipment.
At 109,000 square feet, the facility has a 15,000-square-foot Class 1 clean
room. During the first phase of operation, the fab is capable of 500 to 600 wafer
starts a week. Vitesse also has options on acreage to the west to build a
back-end test facility.
Currently, Vitesse has transferred both the H-GaAs 3 and H-GaAs 4 process
from Camarillo to Colorado, and the bulk of devices in the latter, 0.5-micron
process will move to Colorado Springs. The newer fab is the only facility
capable of manufacturing the future H-GaAs 5, a process slated for 0.3-micron
feature sizes and 3.3-V interfaces.
Vitesse will use 2.5-Gbit/s applications in both data communications and telecom
as a common driver for Colorado designs. For telecom, that means OC-48
Sonet, usually with a WDM front end. OEMs are using WDM as a means of
pushing out the need to move to native 10-Gbit OC-192 fiber infrastructure. But
Greg Borodaty, product marketing manager for telecom, said that WDM has
become an important driver for OC-192 as well, since OEMs now assume some
level of color-based channelized multiplexing will be done in all
optical-transmission systems.
"We're already in most of the designs of the Ciena clones," Borodaty said.
"Now we need to optimize for metropolitan WDM applications, and for true
optical routing and switching without optoelectronic conversions."
On the simplest level, Vitesse will expand its base of physical-layer chips for
OC-48 and OC-192 Sonet. But to support true optical-layer services, the
company will add specialized components for protocol monitoring, section
termination, crosspoint switching and forward-error correction.
In the works are a protocol-monitoring device that performs all Sonet
operations, administration, monitoring and performance (OAM&P ) specs,
including B1 error monitoring and J0 Sonet overhead byte monitoring. Also
coming are a 2 x 2 crossbar switch intended as an all-optical signal splitter.
"This won't lead to a true optical cross-connect, but it will allow asynchronous
switches that act like cross-connects," Borodaty said. Similar designs already
are planned for the 10-Gbit OC-192 Sonet rate.
Existing members of the VSC816x multiplexer/demux family will move to 3.3-V
interfaces by year's end. Tomasetta predicted that, as OEMs move to optical
cross-connect and routing functions for Internet backbones, simple WDM
devices will shrink in size, power dissipation and cost to become the equivalent
of stackable Ethernet switches for the edge of the wide-area network. In
theory, that could mean that low-voltage 816x mux parts will become a
high-volume product.
Plenty of opportunity
In the meantime, the Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel markets will provide
plenty of opportunity to take on the capacity that the Colorado fab allows.
Michael Millhollan, vice president and general manager of data communications
at Vitesse, said the company already has outsourced some CMOS chips for
simple Fibre Channel port bypass functions, but sees GaAs as the driver for
integrating multiple functions for port cards in the future. Examples include
combo optical receiver-transimpedance amp chips; chips that mix a limit amp,
decision circuit, clock recovery and demux; and combination mux/laser-driver
chips.
In ATM, Vitesse still is considering how far up the protocol stack in the digital
portion of the design to go. For physical-layer devices, Vitesse references the
PMC-Sierra Suni chips for OC-3 designs but will offer its own designs for
native 2.5-Gbit User Network Interface functions. The number of markets
where 2.5-Gbit mixed-signal designs can be used for both WAN and LAN is
unprecedented, Millhollan said.
"We see a harmonic convergence of sorts at 2.5 Gbits, which helps to drive
higher volumes through design reuse," he said. Rickey of AMCC pointed out
that his company is moving in the same direction, with the SiliconHiway
architecture introduced in May representing the first step toward common
2.5-Gbit designs (see May 6, page 1).
Vitesse is bullish enough about the 6-inch fab as guidepost to its transition to
communications that it took the board of directors through the plant last week to
demonstrate the predictability of the manufacturing process. Tomasetta
predicted that "if current trends continue, we could one day be realizing $400
million to $500 million out of this facility."
IBM/AMCC partnership
techweb.com
iGe deal between AMCC, IBM includes design tools
Loring Wirbel
San Diego - As anticipated, Applied Microcircuits Corp. signed a supply deal
with IBM Microelectronics last month (see July 20, page 1) that gives it 48
months of access to IBM's most advanced methods of producing silicon
germanium circuits, potentially including SiGe devices that employ copper
interconnect.
The agreement also calls for IBM to lead a joint effort to define common design
methodologies for SiGe circuits. IBM's various SiGe partners will have access
to those methodologies.
Brent Little, director of strategic marketing at AMCC, said the deal does not
give IBM's ASIC group access to AMCC's macro cores for high-speed Sonet
functions. Rather, the companies will collaborate on transistor- and gate-level
design techniques, and on back-end functions appropriate for a process that
places 65-GHz heterojunction bipolar transistors on a standard CMOS substrate.
The end result would be a general-purpose mixed-signal design system
optimized for SiGe.
Open Q This article makes it sound that AMCC isn't really ready to take on the GaS folks yet, until more basic work is done. We know that Vitessse has the 6 inch fab up, but maybe next year will be different? Anybody know when AMCC will really start to ship SiGe chips???Thanks in advance.
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