TowerJazz announced a SiGe Terabit Platform

7 April, 2016

Israeli Semiconductor foundry TowerJazz announced that its new platform reached wired communication speed over 100Gbps

Israeli Semiconductor foundry TowerJazz announced that its new platform reached wired communication speed over 100Gbps

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Wireline data traffic is increasing almost exponentially over the last years. Google traffic has increased by 50 times over the last six to seven years, and  experts predict that this trend is going to intensify over the next years. TowerJazz new silicon-germanium (SiGe) BicMOS S4 process is the specialty foundry’s reaction to this trend.

TowerJazz addresses this market through a family of customized foundry silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technologies and announced the availability of its highest performance process to date: S4. TowerJazz customers include the who’s-who for components that carry the world’s high-speed data traffic such as: Broadcom, Inphi, MACOM, Maxim, Maxlinear and Semtech, among others.

The TowerJazz SiGe terabit platform includes advanced CMOS and high power SiGe devices that enable advanced performance for ICs in high-speed communications links.  These components include, for example, trans-impedance amplifiers (TIA) on the receive path and laser drivers on the transmit path. The new S4 boasts transistor speeds that exceed 300GHz and can reduce power consumption by nearly an order of magnitude.

The new technology was recently demonstrated by TowerJazz. The first demonstration took place in the University of California (2015BCTM) and achieved TIA performance at 50 Gbps. Dr. Payam Heydari, a prof at the university, said: “We measured up to 70Gbps data rate, using a NRZ (non-return to zero) architecture with an eye of 50Gbps. We estimate this chip will consume less than 0.5mW per GHz.”

Tjhe second demonstration, of a 112 Gbps transceiver (2015 IEEE CSCS) took place at Nokia’s Innovation engine Bell Labs. Bell Lab technical manager Shahriar Shahramian said: “To my knowledge, this is the world’s first demonstration of a >100GBs serial datalink built with a silicon IC. The 56GBaud, 4-PAM transmission over 2-km of SSMF (single mode fiber) has been experimentally demonstrated.”

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Posted in: News , Semiconductors