Specialty foundry TowerJazz (which has fabrication plants at Tower Semiconductor Ltd in Migdal Haemek, Israel, and at its subsidiaries Jazz Semiconductor Inc in Newport Beach, CA, USA and TowerJazz Japan Ltd) and Avago Technologies, a supplier of analog, mixed-signal and optoelectronic interface components and subsystems for wireless, wireline and industrial applications, have expanded their strategic collaboration, focusing on Avago's next-generation products using TowerJazz's silicon germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technology platform. Continued collaboration aims to enable Avago Fiber Optic Products Division (FOPD) to achieve the stringent technical specifications and meet cost and performance requirements for optical networking markets while helping TowerJazz to define and develop its next-generation process technologies.
The technology collaboration between TowerJazz and Avago FOPD has resulted in Avago's recent launch of the Gen4SR, a 10Gbps small-form-factor pluggable optical transceiver (SFP) for short-reach applications. By collaborating with TowerJazz, Avago has unlimited access to TowerJazz's optimized SiGe BiCMOS technology based on both the SBC18H2 process with transistor speeds of 200GHz and the H3 process with transistor speeds of 280GHz, together with mixed-signal CMOS.
"TowerJazz's advanced technology enables Avago Technologies to define and develop a plethora of new products, increasing our market share with existing and new customers," says Dr Faouzi Chaahoub, senior director of R&D, IC Engineering, at Avago FOPD. "Avago's 10Gbps SFP+ chipset is the first product released deploying TowerJazz's technology. Our collaboration with TowerJazz using their high-performance SiGe BICMOS will enable us to develop the highest-performance and the lowest-power ICs for Avago's next-generation optical transceivers beyond 10Gbps," he adds.
"Our high-performance SiGe is uniquely positioned in the fiber-optic space, where we offer customers the highest-speed, lowest-power-consumption and lowest-noise SiGe transistors integrated in analog-friendly 0.18μm and 0.13μm nodes," claims Marco Racanelli, senior VP & general manager of TowerJazz's RF/High Performance Analog business unit.
