Ray T., others, can you tell us how this is good for EMKR? Is this really new? Thanks in advance.....
Motorola Unveils New High-Speed Chip Technology
By Yukari Iwatani
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Communications equipment supplier Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - news) unveiled breakthrough technology on Tuesday that blends the low-cost virtues of silicon computer chips with speed-of-light optics to create faster chips.
Motorola said its research arm has found a way to combine silicon, the basis of most computer chips, with gallium arsenide, a costlier chip-making material, to create a high-speed optical chip that is durable and cost-effective.
Silicon-only chips, used in computers and other electronic devices, tend to be durable and cheap, but electronic circuits tend to slow down any optical features that travel at the speed of light.
By contrast, gallium arsenide chips, which are used in DVD video players, communications equipment and lasers, are 40 times faster than silicon chips; but they are fragile and expensive. University research groups and semiconductor companies have been racing to develop gallium arsenide chips that are less costly to make.
``What we've fundamentally done is change the whole foundation of the high-tech industry,'' Dennis Roberson, Motorola's chief technology officer, told Reuters in an interview ahead of the announcement.
``What we're now able to do is to marry the best characteristics of silicon ... with the high performance and optical characteristics of (new materials),'' Roberson said.
Motorola shares rose 36 cents, or 2 percent, at $17.76 on the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites) in midday trade despite a grim outlook on the telecommunications industry by Swedish rival Ericsson (news - web sites) (LMEb.ST). Motorola stock has underperformed Standard & Poor's 500 Index by 2 percent since the start of the year.
While the Chicago-area based company may be best known for finished products, such as mobile phones and antenna equipment, Motorola also has a long history of developing semiconductor technology for use in its communications products.
Motorola has filed more than 270 patent applications for this technology, which it said it plans to license to other chip makers.
``They're onto something big. The thing that gets me excited about this is there's a huge amount of potential for being able to put silicon and gallium arsenide and other materials like that on the same chip,'' said Steve Cullen, principal analyst of semiconductor research for Cahners In-Stat Group.
``The long-term potential for this thing is being able to bring the computing power of silicon and the communications capability of gallium arsenide together,'' he added.
Roberson said he expects that chips created with this technology will initially replace more-expensive gallium arsenide chips.
The development of the new technology should benefit companies that currently make gallium arsenide chips, including Microsemi Corp. (Nasdaq:MSCC - news), Triquint Semiconductor Inc. (Nasdaq:TQNT - news) and EMCORE Corp. (Nasdaq:EMKR - news), said Bob Merritt, vice president of Semico Research Corp.
``It substantially reduces the cost of basic chips for all of the existing companies involved in that particular technology area,'' Merritt said. ``What this does is it really allows this very, very high performance technology to be more widely available and find its way into less expensive designs and products,'' he added.
JUST AS FAST
The silicon-gallium arsenide wafer is one-tenth the cost of a pure gallium arsenide wafer, but it performs just as fast, according to Roberson.
Consumers could see the prices of some electronics equipment, like DVD players, fall as a result.
In the second stage, the new chips may be used in products that currently use silicon chips, Roberson said.
In personal computers, for example, the new technology would allow chip makers like Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD - news) to create chips that better integrate communications functions.
Eventually, Motorola expects the new chip to spawn the invention of new electronics equipment.
Motorola also plans to develop and license chips partially made from indium phosphide and gallium nitride, compounds that fall in the same category as gallium arsenide.
The silicon-gallium arsenide technology is still in its development stage, but power amplifiers for cell phones using this technology could be available as early as 2002.
Other potential markets include data storage, lasers for products such as DVD players, medical equipment, radar, automotive electronics, lighting and photovoltaics, Motorola said in a statement |
