News in brief: Jazz, Blu-Ray rival, 3G phones
Jazz Semiconductor, a spin-out from Conexant Systems, is planning to introduce a SiGe process technology with an ft of 300 GHz. According to an article in EE Times, Jazz is preparing separate 0.13-micron versions of its SiGe and CMOS processes.
The prototype 0.13-micron SiGe technology, due out in prototype form in 2004, with have an ft of 300 GHz, 50% faster than Jazz’s current 200 GHz process.
Jazz is also preparing to launch a new 100 GHz version of its existing 0.18 micron SiGe technology, targeting low-cost integrated wireless and wireline applications.
The company is mainly focused on the emerging SiGe foundry business, where its main competitors are IBM, Atmel and Communicant, and uses its CMOS processes to complement its SiGe processes.
Novel optical disc stores 200 Gb of data
Samsung Electronics of Korea and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) have developed a new optical disc technology capable of storing 200 Gb of data on a disc, compared with 23 Gb for the emerging Blu-Ray Disc system.
The technology uses a violet laser diode to write data onto a spinning disc made from a special resin film on a glass substrate. The resin expands when heated by the laser, creating a 50 nm bump that functions as the data bit.
Samsung is one of a number of companies in the Blu-Ray Disc consortium, while Toshiba and NEC are developing a rival standard, Advanced Optical Disc (AOD).
DoCoMo increases 3G cell phone speed
Japanese telecom service provider NTT DoCoMo has developed a technology that increases the speed of its third-generation (3G) cellphone FOMA service by more than 30 times, putting it on par with asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) service.
The FOMA 3G service is based on the W-CDMA system, which complies with IMT-2000, an international standard for 3G mobile communications.
The new technology would enable handsets to receive television and high-quality music content, which cannot be handled by the current FOMA service. The firm hopes to have the technology deployed as early as 2005.
The echnology employs a more efficient form of transmission by allotting frequencies for intensive use to specific users. This allows transmission speeds to reach a maximum of 14 Mbit/s, far faster than the current 384 kbit/s. DoCoMo hopes to develop prototype equipment this year.
A rival firm, KDDI, plans to being offering cell phone service that has transmission speeds of 2.4 Mbit/s in Japan s three major metropolitan regions this fall.
