Xceive Corp., a market leader in hybrid silicon tuners with proven success in PC, television and the digital home, and Jazz Semiconductor®, a leader in Analog-intensive Mixed-signal (AIMS) foundry solutions and wholly owned subsidiary of Jazz Technologies™ Inc. announced they have collaborated to deliver Xceive’s next-generation family of silicon tuners offering state-of-the-art performance where both analog and digital reception is required. Xceive’s XC5000 series of high performance analog-digital terrestrial SiGe TV and PCTV tuners support global TV standards including Cable QAM256 as well as other emerging standards. Xceive leveraged Jazz Semiconductor’s 0.18-micron SiGe BiCMOS process (SBC18) to achieve unprecedented size reduction and outstanding performance.

XC5000 is the most integrated high performance single chip silicon terrestrial TV class tuner with all filtering and analog demod (Vif/Sif) on chip as well. According to Xceive, it has been benchmarked very favorably against several top analog-digital Can tuners by tier one TV manufacturers. The XC5000 is targeted at high performance large screen TVs and high-end PCTV applications – it is not targeted at low end tuners for toys, 1” screen TVs, or other non performance demanding applications where CMOS tuners will someday excel. The XC5000 was recently selected as a Design News' Golden Mousetrap Award finalist in the "Components, Hardware, and Interconnect" category.

The XC5000 is housed in an ultra-small (7 x 7 mm) 48-pin QFN package. It integrates all the SAW filters and video/audio demodulation in order to achieve a low BOM cost. The architecture and technology minimizes tuner-to-tuner and channel-to-channel performance variations and achieves very tight tolerances resulting in reduced customer product returns. With its on-board DSP controller, the tuner supports worldwide television standards including PAL, NTSC, DVBT, ATSC, and QAM256 catering to the needs of the global TV and PC-TV market.

Jazz Semiconductor’s SBC18 process is designed for the efficient integration of RF receivers by combining two low-noise, high dynamic range, low power SiGe (NPN) transistors together with high-density, 1.8 V and 3.3 V mixed signal CMOS and a wealth of options including: lateral and vertical PNP transistors, high quality passive elements such as MIM capacitors, resistors (poly and metal), deep trench and triple well isolation, and up to six layers of metal with thick top metal for high Q inductors.

"We are proud to offer this market disrupting tuner technology, integration and performance made possible by the high performance Jazz 0.18um SiGe BiCMOS process," said Marcus Tai, vice president of operations for Xceive. “XC5000 volume shipments have started to key customers, with numerous design wins in the TV and high performance PCTV segments. It is on track to be our fastest ramping product to date."

“We are excited by the breakthrough second-generation products Xceive is creating in SBC18,” said Chuck Fox vice president of sales and marketing, Jazz Semiconductor. “With availability of high-density CMOS and low noise and high dynamic range SiGe transistors on the same wafer, the SBC18 platform is ideally suited for the realization of highly integrated, high performance digital television tuners. In addition, Jazz’s world-class design enablement tools afford customers like Xceive fast time to market while integrating high levels of functionality into differentiated products.”