Tektronix Inc., manufacturer of oscilloscopes, announced that validation of ASICs designed in IBM’s 8HP silicon germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS Specialty Foundry technology are exceeding target specifications for a planned new performance oscilloscope capable of greater than 30 GHz bandwidth across multiple channels while minimizing noise found in older chip sets.
The new oscilloscope platform will meet electronic designers’ needs for more accurate characterization of high speed serial data beyond 10 Gb/s, and enhance optical modulation analysis of 100GbE where complex signaling requires accurate bit capture.
“This represents our first commercial integration of 8HP technology and clearly shows the latest generation of SiGe is delivering significant performance differentiation to the industry’s most demanding oscilloscope applications. This year, we will be delivering a new series of performance oscilloscopes with the lowest noise and class-leading signal acquisition performance across multiple channels,” said Roy Siegel, General Manager, Oscilloscopes, Tektronix. “IBM’s SiGe technology has long delivered the performance and reliability our customers demand and as our lab demonstration indicates, this will continue well into the future.”
IBM’s 8HP technology is a 130 nanometer (nm) SiGe bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) process that offers 2x performance over the previous generation. SiGe technology leverages highly-reliable and mature fabrication processes associated with the 50-year-old silicon industry, but with performance levels comparable to that of exotic materials such as Indium Phosphide (InP) and Gallium Arsenide (GaAs). Unlike those alternatives, SiGe BiCMOS provides access to high-speed bipolar transistors on the same die as standard CMOS, enabling a class of circuitry which marries extreme performance with large-scale integration. It is this union which has allowed Tektronix to reliably deliver feature-rich, high-speed data acquisition systems for over a decade.
“As Tektronix’s lab demonstration makes very apparent, IBM’s 8HP SiGe technology continues to deliver a winning combination of speed, accuracy and integration required for high-end instrumentation,” said Regina Darmoni, Director, Specialty Foundry, IBM.
