New Foundry Gold Rush: RF SOI


By Mark LaPedus About every five years or so, a new and hot market emerges in the specialty foundry business that resembles a frenetic gold rush. The last big gold rush occurred around 2008, when more than a dozen foundries jumped into the bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) market to capitalize on the booming power-management sector. Now, the next gold rush is centering on an emerging technology—th... » read more

CMOS And SOI Invade RF Front End


By Mark LaPedus The next-generation 4G wireless standard known as long-term evolution (LTE) presents some new and difficult design choices for OEMs. One of the more difficult choices involves the less glamorous, but arguably the most critical part in a handset—the radio-frequency (RF) front-end. Typically, the RF front-end often comes in a module and includes various key components, such ... » read more

Over 50% Of Smart Phones And Tablets Leverage SOI


Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ In a recent press release, the SOI wafer leader Soitec said that chips built on its SOI wafers were found in over half of the smartphones and tablets in the market worldwide. 50%? That’s a lot! How do they figure that? The answer: RF. [caption id="attachment_809" align="alignleft" width="549" caption="As seen here... » read more

Smartphones Dial Up New RF Processes


By Mark LaPedus The rapid shift towards smartphones and tablets is driving the need for new and low-power chips at finer geometries. Today, the latest application processors, integrated basebands and other digital cell-phone chips are 28nm planar devices. And it won’t be long before OEMs incorporate 20nm planar and finFET devices in their systems as a means to reduce power and extend batt... » read more