Peregrine Semiconductor and IBM have teamed up to develop and manufacture future generations of Peregrine's patented UltraCMOS™ silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) process technology. When fully qualified, the next-generation UltraCMOS RF ICs will be manufactured by IBM for Peregrine in the jointly-developed 180-nanometer RF CMOS process at IBM's 200 mm semiconductor manufacturing facility in Burlington, VT. This development marks the first commercial use of 200 mm (8-inch) wafer processing for silicon-on-sapphire process, a patented variation of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology that incorporates an ultra-thin layer of silicon on a highly insulating sapphire substrate.
The joint development agreement represents an inflection point in Peregrine's business says Rodd Novak, Chief Marketing Officer, allowing Peregrine to deliver "products with unmatched levels of RF performance and monolithic integration, ideal for high-growth applications such as the RF front-end of mobile phones and multi-mode, multi-band mobile wireless devices; broadband communications including 4G LTE equipment and base stations; mobile DTV/CATV RF signal conditioning; and space satellite systems." In addition, the migration to 200 mm wafers will facilitate the evolution of the process to advanced 180 nm, 130 nm and 90 nm nodes.