RFMD-- High end Chip Makers-- Gallium Arsenide yields a chip with superior speed and performance due to the ability of electrons to move up to 5 times faster in Gallium Arsenide than they can in silicon. this means that GaAs devices can operate at higher speeds with lower power consumption, also the insulating process leads to less performance degredation at high frequencies.
Hence the revenue growth of RFMD, AHAA, and their brethren.
Company Info......
---RF Micro Devices, Inc. is a leading supplier of RF integrated circuits. Their product line includes quadrature modulators, quadrature demodulators, LNA/mixers, IF amplifiers, attenuators, and linear power amplifiers. In addition to offering a standard product line, RFMD will custom design products to optimize performance, power, and size for your specific application. The use of Gallium Arsenide, Silicon, and Heterojunction Bipolar Technologies enables RF to provide their customers with OPTIMUM TECHNOLOGY MATCHING. This approach is unique in the field of RF integrated circuits.---
----Business Description for RF MICRO DEVICE (RFMD) 03/1999
INTRODUCTION
We design, develop, manufacture and market proprietary radio frequency
integrated circuits, or RFICs, for wireless communications applications such as
cellular and personal communication services, cordless telephony, wireless local
area networks, wireless local loop, industrial radios, wireless security and
remote meter reading. We offer a broad array of products -- including
amplifiers, mixers, modulators/demodulators and single chip transmitters,
receivers and transceivers -- that represent a substantial majority of the RFICs
required in wireless subscriber equipment. We design products using three
distinct process technologies: gallium arsenide heterojunction bipolar
transistor, or GaAs HBT; silicon bipolar transistor; and, to a lesser extent,
gallium arsenide metal semiconductor field effect transistor, or GaAs MESFET.
We began manufacturing our own GaAs HBT products at our new wafer
fabrication facility in September 1998, and we are now concentrating our efforts
on increasing our manufacturing capacity to satisfy customer demand for GaAs HBT
products, which is currently greater than we can meet. Before September 1998,
TRW Inc., which is our largest shareholder, manufactured all of our GaAs HBT
products. TRW has granted us a perpetual non-royalty bearing license to use its
GaAs HBT process to design and manufacture products for commercial wireless
applications. Our GaAs HBT power amplifiers and small signal devices have been
designed into advanced subscriber equipment made by leading original equipment
manufacturers, or OEMs, such as Nokia Mobile Phones Ltd., LG Information and
Communications, Ltd., Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd., Samsung
Electronics Co., Ltd., and Motorola, Inc. Through a delivery strategy called
Optimum Technology Matching(R), we also offer silicon and GaAs MESFET components
to complement our GaAs HBT products. Optimum Technology Matching(R) allows us to
offer RFIC solutions, on a component-by-component basis, that best fulfill OEMs'
performance, cost and time-to-market requirements.
INDUSTRY BACKGROUND
The wireless communications industry grew rapidly over the past decade as
cellular, paging, PCS and other emerging wireless communications services became
more widely available and affordable. Technological
advances, changes in telecommunications regulations and the allocation and
licensing of additional radio spectrum have helped cause this growth worldwide.
Technological advances have also led to the development of competing wireless
communications services, and to the development of new and emerging wireless
applications, including second generation digital cordless telephony, wireless
LANs, WLL, wireless security and remote meter reading. As wireless usage grows,
wireless service providers continue to improve the quality and function of the
services they offer and seek to offer greater bandwidth for more capacity.
To expand capacity from first generation cellular communications networks,
certain national governments made available less congested frequency bands for
new wireless communications services. In the United States, the Federal
Communications Commission allocated and auctioned 10 MHz and 30 MHz portions of
spectrum in the 1850 to 1990 MHz range for PCS, and allocated broad band
spectrum in the 2.4 GHz range for wireless LANs. Capacity and functionality also
are being addressed by the wireless industry's movement from wireless networks
that use analog signal modulation techniques to wireless networks that use
digital signal modulation techniques. As compared to analog technologies,
digital technologies generally provide better signal quality, help the
transmission of both voice and data and improve capacity by allowing the
transmission of more information in a smaller amount of frequency space. These
digital technologies place a premium on linear power amplification, which can
mean higher quality signals.
The wireless communications markets have many different air interface
signal transmission standards in different parts of the world, including digital
standards, such as Global System for Mobile Communications, Time Division
Multiple Access and Code Division Multiple Access, analog standards, such as
Advanced Mobile Phone Service and Total Access Communications Systems, and
certain hybrid standards. For PCS, the FCC has approved seven different air
interface standards. The handsets designed for each air interface standard
generally require unique RF and baseband integrated circuit solutions that must
be designed to meet the demands of subscriber equipment users for greater
functionality, smaller and lighter equipment, longer battery life and better
security, all at reduced costs. As a result of these technical challenges and
end user demands, it has become increasingly difficult for OEMs of subscriber
equipment to develop and supply all the required components in a timely and
cost-effective manner. This has caused some OEMs to rely increasingly on third
party value-added technology providers that have the component and systems level
expertise to design and the production capacity to supply these solutions. In
addition, because new entrants to the wireless subscriber equipment market, such
as large consumer electronics companies, tend to be less vertically integrated
than established OEMs, they must rely even more on third party suppliers. This
technology outsourcing trend is particularly evident in the RF segment of the
equipment due to the scarcity of RFIC engineers and the design complexity of the
technology.
RF OVERVIEW
A typical subscriber device for wireless personal communications, such as a
handset, contains digital, baseband and RF components. Digital components
control the overall circuitry and encrypt the voice or other data intended for
transmission and reception, while baseband components are used to process
signals into or from their original electrical form (low frequency analog voice
or data). RF components, such as amplifiers, mixers, attenuators, switches,
modulators, demodulators, oscillators and frequency synthesizers, convert,
switch, process and amplify the high frequency signals that carry the
information to be transmitted or received.
RF technology presents different engineering challenges than standard
semiconductor design. In general, digital and baseband semiconductor design
engineers create standard semiconductor circuit designs by combining "cells"
that previously have been evaluated and characterized. Because cells have
predictable performance, the design engineer can use computers to automate the
design process, which helps accelerate the development of these components. Each
RF component, however, has distinctly different characteristics that influence
overall system performance in complex ways. Instead of having stable inputs and
outputs, the RF circuit characteristics can drift based on process variations,
temperature, power supply and other variables. As a result, performance
characteristics are unique for each device, and the RF engineer must evaluate
and develop new designs on a continuous basis for each system performance level
and air interface standard. In addition to being skilled in semiconductor
circuit design, the RF circuit designer must have a thorough understanding of
signal processing principles, must understand the totality of the system for
which the device is intended and must be able to create designs that function
within the unique parameters of different wireless system architectures. As RF
technology
has moved from discrete components to integrated circuit solutions, the scarcity
of engineers with both integrated circuit design and RF expertise has become
more pronounced.
In early wireless communications equipment, individually packaged discrete
components were mounted on circuit boards to form complex circuits used to
transmit and receive RF signals. Size, reliability and cost concerns ultimately
led to a move from discrete devices to silicon-based integrated circuits.
Particularly for the critical power amplifier function, the use of silicon
integrated circuits at cellular and PCS frequencies has been limited because of
decreased operating performance. In particular, at high frequencies silicon
integrated circuits consume more power, have relatively higher noise and
distortion parameters and create excess heat.
Within the last decade, GaAs semiconductor technology has emerged as an
effective alternative or complement to silicon technology in many high
performance RF applications. GaAs has inherent physical properties that allow
electrons to move up to five times faster than in silicon, which permits the
manufacture of GaAs devices that operate at much higher speeds than silicon
devices or at the same speeds with lower power consumption. This is particularly
important in battery powered portable applications such as handsets. Moreover,
the semi-insulating GaAs substrate significantly reduces some of the <i.unwanted
parasitic effects of the conductive silicon substrate that cause its performance
to degrade at high frequencies.
GaAs integrated circuits were first implemented using a type of transistor
known as MESFET. While GaAs MESFET integrated circuits have become accepted for
many high frequency applications, these devices have certain limitations. In
particular, for power amplifiers used in digital systems it is important to have
a linear signal (i.e., one that is not altered or distorted when amplified).
GaAs MESFET devices have difficulty meeting high linearity performance criteria
without sacrificing other performance criteria. In addition, GaAs MESFET power
amplifiers generally require both a positive and negative power supply for power
stages, which requires the inclusion of additional components or circuitry and a
corresponding increase in device size and complexity. Additionally, the lateral
structure of GaAs MESFET devices hinders the ability to shrink the device size
to enhance manufacturing yields and reduce costs. A different type of GaAs
transistor known as an HBT, which has been used in military and space
applications over the past decade, emerged recently in commercial RF
applications.
Our GaAs HBT products include power amplifiers and small signal devices
that have been designed into advanced subscriber handsets manufactured by
leading OEMs such as Nokia, Hyundai, Phillips, Motorola and LGIC. We believe
that GaAs HBT components offer benefits over GaAs MESFET devices in comparable
applications in a number of ways, including speed, efficiency, the ability to
operate at high frequencies, lack of signal distortion, complexity and size.
STRATEGY
Our goal is to be the leading worldwide supplier of RFICs for a broad range
of commercial wireless applications. To meet this goal, we have developed a
focused strategy. The key elements are:
Expand Manufacturing Capacity. We have completed construction of an
approximately 64,000 square foot fabrication facility and are now
fabricating our own GaAs HBT wafers. This facility became operational in
June 1998, and has been qualified by our major customer and by other
current and potential customers. We have recently undertaken a 6,000 square
foot expansion to the clean room and the purchase or lease of additional
production equipment to increase the facility's capacity to 30,000
four-inch wafers per year, which we expect to complete by the winter of
2000. In addition, we plan to implement a number of additional steps that
we anticipate would increase the facility's capacity to 50,000 four-inch
wafers per year by the spring of 2001. We are also in the process of
evaluating other options to expand manufacturing capacity. We believe that
operating our own GaAs HBT wafer fabrication facility has improved our
ability to respond to customer demand for GaAs HBT products and is
providing us with greater opportunities to enhance product and process
quality and reliability, and that our future success depends heavily upon
our ability to expand our manufacturing capacity.
Offer a Wide Range of RF Products. We offer a full line of products
that include power amplifiers, low noise amplifiers/mixers, quadrature
modulators/demodulators and single chip transceivers. For cellular
and PCS applications, we offer products addressing virtually all of the
analog and digital air interface standards. Our design engineering staff
has developed proprietary design and fabrication modeling techniques and
tools to enable us to deliver state-of-the-art integrated circuit designs
that meet our customers' stringent technical specifications. In response to
customer requests, we are also preparing to offer certain RFICs in a
"modular" package that, in addition to one or more RFMD-designed integrated
circuits, includes passive components, such as filters and resistors, that
are commonly incorporated into end-user devices. We currently plan to
assemble and package these modules both in-house and through one of our
packaging vendors. Assembling and packaging these products in-house will
present us with a variety of technical and other challenges, but we believe
this is a necessary step for us to remain competitive in our industry.
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Lost,
thanks for the Gilder paper, I will have a read of it.
John |
