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Technology for your ideas.
Higher Value Applications
More Reliability Product
More than Moore
Specialised foundry services allow
increased integration at a silicon
level, providing :
- increased complexity
- more efficient design
- additional functionality
- better power management
- easier application integration
- reduced packaging costs
- reduced test costs
- smaller footprint
- reduced I/O’s
What is "More than Moore"?
Moore’s Law describes the long term trend for computing hardware complexity. Moore’s observation is that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit approximately doubles every 2 years.
The Digital arena lends it’s self to scalability in accordance with Moore’s law and this trend appears to be on target for at least the next decade, taking the digital world through the 22nm node and on to 16nm, then 11nm.
The Analog arena, however, does not scale well for many components. For example, a capacitor cannot be shrunk without new dielectric materials. Similarly for an inductor.
High voltage devices and power devices have self-defining sizes, dictated by the laws of physics, so scale poorly.
The majority of Analog applications fall in the technology node of 180nm or above.
By using a well-characterised, IP-rich semiconductor technology, high value can be added to the silicon by greatly enhancing the Analog content whilst still benefiting from the efficiencies of integrated digital signal processing.
Other benefits include more efficient use of silicon, as the Analog / Digital interface no longer needs to be taken out via I/O pads. With this comes lower noise, better reliability, reduced packaging costs, reduced test costs, reduced circuit real-estate in the application, to name a few.
Single Chip Solution
Benefits
- Less I/Os ... Digital / Analog interface via on-chip interconnects
- single encapsulation cost
- single test cost, with reduced functionality
- smaller footprint in application/li>
- higher package density
- lower energy consumption
- lower overall cost
- faster time to market
- less integration issues
- device compatibility guaranteed
- design can include power management features for both digital & analog parts
Multi Chip Solution
Area lost due to
- Spacing between chips
- I/Os used to share data between digital & analog chips
Additional cost due to
- multiple encapsulation cost
- multiple test costs
- larger footprint in application
- lower package density
- higher energy consumption
- complex integration issues
- analog & digital parts function
- will they work together
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