Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., founder of RF SOI (silicon on insulator) and pioneer of advanced RF solutions, announces the UltraCMOS 10 platform, the newest advancement in Peregrine’s UltraCMOS technology. UltraCMOS 10 RF SOI delivers both flexibility and unparalleled performance for addressing the ever-increasing challenges of RF front-end design. It offers the performance of UltraCMOS technology with the economies of SOI, and it delivers a more than 50-percent performance improvement over comparable solutions.
Peregrine’s versatile, new 130 nm UltraCMOS 10 technology delivers the support needed for the latest generation of LTE-Advanced smartphones and, for the first time, will allow the company to deliver cost-competitive products for 3G smartphones.
Peregrine is enhancing a long-term relationship and leveraging a new one for the UltraCMOS 10 introduction – Soitec’s breakthrough semiconductor materials coupled with tier-one fab GLOBALFOUNDARIES’ custom fabrication flow. Paul Boudre, COO at Soitec says, “We are very pleased that Soitec’s revolutionary-engineered semiconductor materials support Peregrine’s next-generation UltraCMOS 10 technology.”
Ajit Manocha, CEO at GLOBALFOUNDRIES describes the collaboration with Peregrine as follows: “GLOBALFOUNDRIES seeks partnerships with leaders in their market categories, and we are delighted the opportunity arose to work with Peregrine Semiconductor. Together, we co-developed a custom flow to help make Peregrine’s new UltraCMOS 10 generation a truly cutting-edge advance in RF SOI.”
Smartphone manufacturers face a number of tough design challenges, including balancing performance requirements with cost and maintaining consumers’ signal quality and data-rate speeds despite the increasing number of frequency bands and volume of data. Mobile Experts’ Principal Analyst of Radio Access and RF Semiconductors Joe Madden offers his perspective on the challenges and growth curve of the smartphone market by stating, “The iPhone 5S has more than double the frequency bands than the iPhone 5, and this is just one example of how dramatically the requirements for smartphone components are increasing. LTE units are expected to grow from 150 million in 2012 to 1.2 billion in 2018 (42 percent CAGR).” Peregrine’s UltraCMOS 10 technology will outpace these increasing performance needs so consumers will continue to see improved connectivity.
The UltraCMOS 10 130 nm generation delivers the industry’s best RON COFF performance and enables improved performance and scaling. The RON COFF figure of merit is a ratio of how much loss occurs when a radio signal goes through a switch in its ON state (RON, or on-resistance) and how much the radio signal leaks through the capacitor in its OFF state (COFF, or off capacitance). The RON COFF performance metric for UltraCMOS 10 technology is 113 fsec. This is a five-fold improvement over the first generation released by Peregrine 10 years ago. It represents Peregrine’s expertise in using best-in-class engineering methodologies and materials to lower insertion loss without sacrificing isolation performance. In addition to improved RON COFF performance, UltraCMOS 10 platform leverages Peregrine’s patented design technology, which delivers linearity of more than 75 dBm at 900 MHz and equates to higher data rates and improved co-existence for consumers.
Jim Cable, CEO at Peregrine Semiconductor, sums up Peregrine’s latest milestone as follows: “Peregrine is applying 25 years of RF SOI knowledge to deliver the market’s highest level of integration for RF front-end design capability. UltraCMOS 10 technology offers the industry’s highest performance at a competitive cost. The platform reinforces Peregrine’s commitment to continual innovation and honors our legacy of delivering the very best solutions for our customers.”