Jazz puts Infinera in the mood for SiGe
Jazz Semiconductor has unveiled itself as the provider of the SiGe technology employed in Infinera s 100 Gb/s ICs that feature in its DTN network system.
According to Jazz, Infinera used its 0.18-micron SiGe BiCMOS process to develop its DTN products that were launched in 2004.
“Jazz process technologies are well suited for our complex, highly advanced optical systems,” said David Welch, chief marketing and strategy officer at Sunnyvale, California, based Infinera.
“Their robust design kits and tools have allowed us to bring this product to market quickly.”
Jazz, based down the California coast from Infinera in Newport Beach, said the DTN system primarily needed high levels of integration at high speed and low power. SiGe BiCMOS met these requirements.
“SiGe BiCMOS offers bipolar devices with performance that approaches that of InP and III-V materials together with the large integration potential of CMOS - making it the right choice for many Analog-Intensive Mixed-Signal (AIMS) products,” Jazz said.
Jazz claims that SiGe BiCMOS makes designing AIMS devices comparatively straightforward, in contrast to deep-submicron CMOS, where numerous design cycles are often needed to attain the required analog performance.
In addition it says combining SiGe with logic CMOS in AIMS products can also be more economical than using InP or GaAs material systems.
A third financial advantage, according to Jazz, arises because the costs of lithography required for 200 MHz performance is an order of magnitude lower when using SiGe BiCMOS instead of CMOS.
