a couple nice articles on SiGe developments out of IBM Micro. i'll follow-up with the second one.
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IBM Produces 40-Gbit/s Communications Chip
12/03/99, 9:29 a.m. ET
By J. Robert Lineback
Semiconductor Business News
techweb.com
IBM has quietly married its copper interconnect process with a new 0.18-micron silicon-germanium (SiGe) technology to produce communications ICs capable of handling up to 40 gigabit per second transmission rates.
Technology managers from IBM Microelectronics are scheduled to present details on the SiGe technology at next week's International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) in Washington, D.C. The 0.18-micron SiGe technology is being readied for volume manufacturing in Burlington, Vt., following a year of prototype production and sampling of high-speed devices.
The new SiGe is a BiCMOS-based technology, combining a 0.18-micron, 1.8-volt CMOS process with an SiGe bipolar transistor that has a cutoff frequency of 90 GHz, said Seshadri Subbanna, manager of BiCMOS technology development at IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center. Researchers modified IBM's CMOS copper process for integration with the bipolar transistor in the new SiGe technology.
IBM Microelectronics managers would not discuss when the 0.18-micron SiGe technology will be used to produce commercial products.
"It is currently in what we call 'manufacturing install,' which is when you are installing a process for manufacturing site as opposed to development," said Bernie Meyerson, director of telecom technologies at IBM who has been long associated with the company's SiGe activities.
With the ability to produce ICs handling 40 billion bits per second, the 0.18-micron SiGe process is capable of addressing the new OC768 protocol for high-speed networks, such as 40-Gbit/s Sonet. It also has the potential of being used to fabricate system-on-chip designs for third-generation cell phones that are capable of accessing the Internet and running multimedia applications.
"It gives you lower power and better performance, which is lower noise [in the circuit], so you are able to process data at faster rates," Subbanna said. "There are also system-level savings because you can combine a lot of stuff on to one chip."
IBM managers believe the company is at least 18 months ahead of any other company making presentations about SiGe at next week's IEDM.
"We are running upwards to 100 wafers a day in our quarter-micron technology, while other folks at the conference will be bragging about doing development at quarter micron -- which won't be ready [for production] for at least a year," Meyerson said.
IBM was able to pull far ahead of other companies in SiGe development because it opted to skip the 0.35-micron generation a couple of years ago, according to Meyerson. IBM has been developing SiGe technology for more than 15 years, and it has been in production of devices since the mid-1990s.
To handle the 40-Gbit/s communication applications, the 0.18-micron technology has been given copper metal vs. conventional aluminum wiring to reduce the resistance in the interconnect. Copper also addresses the problem of electromigration narrow metal lines. |
