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Technology Stocks : Vitesse Semiconductor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Ox who wrote (1379)	4/14/1998 12:03:00 AM
From: David Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4710

Thanks for the CC notes, Michael. It is appreciated!

To: The Ox who wrote (1379)	5/30/1998 11:51:00 AM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4710

previously, on vitesse. apr 10: >For all the talk about SiGe and other Silicon processes overrunning >VTSS, I have yet to see any of this for myself. Talk about >technology is cheap. Show me production quality processing and I >will take notice. In fact, the more people take aim at VTSS, the more >the company continues to impress. The GaAs process that VTSS >has perfected is very complicated. This is the single greatest reason >why I believe it will be quite a while before someone comes along >and really gives this company a severe challenge." apr 13 (post-conference call): >They don't see SiGe as a major threat for their types of products due >to the outstanding preformance of GaAs. They think it's more for >Cellular phone amplifiers and the lower end of the GaAs spectrum. >Recommended all competitors to spend as much as possible on >SiGe so they could waste their resources. michael. i'm fairly new to vitesse (neither long nor short), been following along just a few months prior to the split, so please forgive my ignorance. that said, my interest in vitesse is piqued by my penchant for tele- and datacom stocks and the incredible niche management has carved for itself. obviously, as with any tech stock, one must pay heed to future obsolesence and competing products (e.g., BiCMOS). from my limited due diligence and your aforecited posts regarding SiGe, i gather management is not very concerned, particularly because "it's more for cellular phone amplifiers and the lower end of the GaAs spectrum." nevertheless, in my digging, i came across the following recent article on techweb which cites SiGe application for wireless LANs including harris semi's product to be released later this year. would you or any of the other technically astute on this board (viz. slob or gda) care to comment? i'd be sincerely appreciative. thanks, -chris. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 11, 1998, TechWeb News Austrian chip firm preps SiGe BiCMOS By Peter Clarke Unterpremstatten, Austria - Austria Mikro Systeme International AG (AMS) is adding the option of silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction-bipolar-transistor capability to its 0.8-micron BiCMOS process. The company, active in RF and mixed-signal baseband circuits for telecommunications, is pursuing SiGe primarily to improve the integration and reduce the power consumption of a front-end chip set for Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT)-standard equipment operating at roughly 1.8 GHz. But Matthijs Pardoen, an RF-design project manager at AMS, said the benefits of the SiGe BiCMOS process could later be applied to RF circuits for such applications as wireless LANs. Pardoen said that an AMS 0.8-micron SiGe transistor has been characterized with a transit frequency of nearly 60 GHz and a maximum frequency of oscillation of about 28 GHz at 10 mA. "We are doing test runs right now. The models are already characterized," Pardoen said. He said AMS should be able to offer commercial circuits early in 1999. Familiar strategy The company's SiGe strategy is similar to that of Temic Telefunken Microelectronic GmbH (Heilbronn, Germany), now part of Atmel Corp. (San Jose, Calif.). Temic offers a DECT-compliant RF chip set that comprises two bipolar chips and a bipolar SiGe IC. The latter integrates a power amplifier, low-noise amplifier and the transmit/receive switch (see April 20, page 58). But Pardoen distinguished AMS' approach from Temic's by noting that the Temic SiGe chip employs bipolar technology, not BiCMOS. "Including CMOS in the process allows us to go further," he said. The first target for the AMS technology will be the RF transceiver in a DECT chip set from the company. "We will put the LNA [low-noise amplifier] and mixer in silicon germanium. It can dramatically reduce power consumption," Pardoen said. "The next stage is to bring the power amplifier into the same chip. Then it could be the [frequency] synthesizer." Pardoen also said AMS would consider applying the 0.8-micron SiGe BiCMOS process to wireless LANs operating at 2.4 and 5.6 GHz. That could bring AMS into competition with Harris Semiconductor (Melbourne, Fla.). Harris has access to SiGe technology developed by IBM Microelectronics and plans to use the technology, which also employs a BiCMOS process, to build 2.4-GHz wireless LAN chips due for release in October (see Nov. 17, 1997, page 1). Pardoen said it was too early to quantify the performance or power-consumption benefits that users could expect from the forthcoming AMS circuits. "You can use silicon germanium in two ways: by improving noise performance; or [reducing] power consumption by up to an order of magnitude. "The thickness of the base region is critical, and we're still working on the trade-offs," he said. Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc. techweb.com