El Segundo, Calif.—If your enterprise rolls its own RFICs (radio-frequency integrated circuits), you'll be interested in this announcement from a State-side EDA (electronics design automation) vendor and a European silicon provider. California-based Applied Wave Research, Inc. (AWR) and Germany-based Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics (IHP) jointly announce the availability of IHP's high-performance specialty SiGe (silicon-germanium) process for AWR's Analog Office 2006 design suite.

Long-Term Partnership

If you’re not familiar with IHP, it’s a research center that actively cooperates with industrial and academic partners to make prototypes that are relevant to industry. As an institute of the Leibniz Association, the company pursues long-term goals and connects basic research with applied research.

The delivery of the first AWR-based IHP PDK (process design kit) is part of a long-term partnership between the two companies to deliver RFIC design approaches for high-frequency applications.

The Analog Office design software is used to design next-generation analog and RFIC wireless and wire-line communications products. AWR claims it can help you shorten IC development cycles, and accelerate tape-out to IHP's process.

”Accelerate The Process”

"This collaboration will help you accelerate a design-to-tape-out process, eliminate design re-spins, and achieve first-time silicon success," avows AWR president James Spoto.

IHP's SG25H1 process, a 0.25-micron BiCMOS (bipolar CMOS) process, offers NPN HBTs (heterojunction bipolar transistors) with f_T/f_max of 180/220-GHz, making it suited to applications in the higher GHz bands.

The process includes integrated HBTs with cut-off frequencies of up to 220-GHz, and LDMOS (lateral double diffuse metal-oxide semiconductor) devices with breakdown voltages of up to 26-V.

You can also use the process to design complementary devices. The process includes a set of passive devices, too (resistors, capacitors, and inductors).

The Analog Office-based IHP PDK includes a set of schematic symbols, simulation models, and parameterized layout cells characterized to match IHP's performance.

The simulation models are validated with the Synopsys HSPICE simulator and AWR's own harmonic balance simulator.

Availability

The AWR-based IHP PDK will be available directly from IHP and its design partners this quarter.

For more details, contact IHP, Im Technologiepark 25, 15236 Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Phone: +49 335 5625 0.

IHP, +49 335 5625 0, www.ihp-microelectronics.com

Or, contact Applied Wave Research, Inc., 1960 East Grand Ave., Suite 430, El Segundo, Calif. 90245. Phone: 310-726-3000.

Applied Wave Research, 310-726-3000, www.appwave.com