Seeking to gain more traction for its silicon-on-sapphire technology in RF designs, Peregrine Semiconductor Corp. has formed an exclusive joint development and foundry agreement with IBM Corp.

Fast-growing Peregrine (San Diego)--which is looking to file an initial public offering (IPO) in the next 12-to-15 months--has also altered its foundry strategy as part of the major announcement.

Prior to the announcement, Peregrine’s foundry partners included MagnaChip, Oki/Rohm, Sapphicon and UMC. Now, fabless Peregrine has added IBM to the mix for its latest and greatest technology.

As part of the plan, IBM and Peregrine will jointly develop Peregrine’s next-generation, silicon-on-sapphire technology, based on a 180-nm process on 200-mm wafers. Peregrine’s technology, dubbed UltraCMOS, will be manufactured on a foundry basis within IBM’s 200-mm fab in Burlington, Vt.

A form of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, silicon-on-sapphire is formed by depositing a thin layer of silicon onto a sapphire wafer. This in turn creates an insulating sapphire substrate, which is said to have advantages over bulk silicon and gallium arsenide (GaAs) in RF applications.

Until now, Peregrine shipped devices based on 0.25-micron technology (and above) on 150-mm substrates. Peregrine refers to the new 180-nm silicon-on-sapphire process as its Step7 technology. The company claims Step7 produces devices that are 50 percent smaller with 100 times better linearity.

The technology is expected to propel a new class of RF devices, including high-power switches and tunable components, said Rodd Novak, chief marketing officer for Peregrine.

With the technology, it also hopes to enter the power amplifier business, thereby competing against Anadigics, RF Micro, Skyworks, TriQuint and others, Novak said. ''Our vision is to develop multi-mode power amps’’ on a single chip, based on silicon-on-sapphire technology, he added.

The deal will also enable Peregrine to migrate to the 130- and 90-nm nodes. If it makes good on its promises, the company could become the next RF chip powerhouse.

Si-on-sapphire is born

Peregrine was founded in 1990, but the company could be considered a late bloomer. It was founded by former researchers at the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego to commercialize silicon-on-sapphire. 

That was no small task. The technology was invented in 1963 at North American Aviation (now Boeing), but the technology never made it outside the lab, according to Peregrine. HP, RCA and others developed silicon-on-sapphire chip technology for niche applications in the 1970s. 

But for the most part, the technology was exotic, expensive and difficult to make. Even Peregrine experienced difficulties in the early years. The turning point came in 2003, when the company was able to scale the technology, thereby gaining some traction in RF applications. ''We were an overnight success after 20 years,’’ Novak said. 

''Silicon-on-sapphire was the first SOI solution, which began life in rad-hard space and military products over 25 years ago. Sapphire is a superior insulator compared to SOI, and it has finally become cheap enough for commercial deployment,’’ said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts Co. (Tempe, Ariz.) ''Peregrine’s revenues have steadily increased through the semiconductor market slump, and their market position looks to be very strong.’’ 

With little or no fanfare, the privately-held chip maker has seen its sales jump from just over $10 million in 2005, to about $64 million in 2008. Even during the recession in 2009, the company grew as it sales hit $72 million, while also claiming to be profitable. 

In March, Peregrine announced the expansion of its European design and manufacturing operations and the opening of a new facility located in Aix-en-Provence, France. Peregrine’s operations include RF design and engineering at its center in Aix-en-Provence. 

This year, its sales are projected to hit $100 million. An IPO is also in the works. Peregrine sells a plethora of RF parts for wireless, broadband CATV/DTV and high-reliability applications. 

It is gaining traction in the RF switch portions of mobile designs, where the company’s technology is displacing GaAs devices from various vendors. Peregrine’s UltraCMOS technology is based on third-party sapphire wafers that are grown as large crystals in a controlled environment. 

The breakthrough that enabled its ultra-thin films was developed by the California Institute of Technology and Hewlett-Packard Co. in the 1970s, according to Peregrine. The process, dubbed solid phase epitaxial regrowth (SPER), involves a silicon implant. 

''The implant parameters are set so that the silicon crystal is amorphized in the region near the sapphire interface, but the better quality crystal away from the interface is left intact. An anneal then regrows the amorphous silicon into a single crystal by using the upper layer of the film as a template. The final step is the thinning of the silicon layer to about 100 nm thickness by oxidation,’’ according to Peregrine. 

HP never commercialized the SPER technique, but the work was continued and refined by the Naval Ocean Systems Center. Technologists left NOSC to form Peregrine, which refined and commercialized the technology.

New strategy

''Peregrine is a key supplier of chips for the WCDMA/HSPA cell-phone market between the antenna and the RF transceiver. I don't think they are in any CDMA handsets. (This is) a market controlled by Qualcomm,’’ Strauss said.

''Most of the ‘ink’ is focused on the application processor, the baseband/modem, and, to a lesser extent, the RF transceiver,’’ Strauss said. ''Very little is written about the problem of switching (and tuning) multiple antennas among one or more RF transceivers. Peregrine is the only company offering a silicon-on-sapphire solution, which they claim offers a more complete solution, including matching and tuning circuitry along with switching. (It is said to have a) superior performance than competitive CMOS duplexers and switches.’’

But the company faces some challenges from a new class of products. ''There are new MEMS-based RF switches becoming available that address part of the problem (the switching part),’’ Strauss said. ''But to address the many different frequencies required for worldwide coverage, the requirements are becoming more challenging. The new Nokia N8, for example, supports nine different frequency bands.’’

The Nokia N8, Nokia's latest smartphone, was announced late last month. It features a 12 megapixel camera and is able to make HD-quality videos. Doubling as a portable entertainment center, the N8 enables access to Web TV services that deliver programs, news and entertainment. It supports GSM/EDGE at the 850/900/1800/1900-MHz frequency bands and WCDMA at the 850/900/1700/1900/2100-MHz bands.

It’s unclear if Peregrine has won a socket in the N8, but the company hopes to gain more traction in RF. To accomplish its goals, it is moving towards more advanced processes to reduce chip costs.

It is also altering its foundry strategy. Previously, the company had four foundry partners: Magnachip, Oki/Rohm, Sapphicon and UMC. In 2008, Sapphicon Semiconductor, a privately-funded company, acquired a fab once owned by Peregrine. That fab is located in Australia.

For the most part, these vendors are making Peregrine’s RF devices on a foundry basis, based on 150-mm wafers at geometries down to 0.25-micron. Peregrine will continue to use these foundry vendors for 0.25-micron and above.

But at 200-mm and 0.18-micron technology, the company will exclusively use and develop technology with IBM, Novak said. This development marks the first commercial use of 200-mm wafer processing for silicon-on-sapphire processes.

Collaboration between the two companies began in 2008. The companies are combining IBM’s experience in RF SOI with Peregrine’s expertise in silicon-on-sapphire. In 2007, IBM rolled out 7RF SOI, an 180-nm, SOI technology geared for RF switch applications. IBM will continue to develop and sell that technology.

The first 180-nm UltraCMOS RF devices from Peregrine have sampled to a key customer and commercial production release is expected in 2011. Initial product roadmaps include configurable RF cellular front ends in the form of high-power RF switches, tunable components, and power amplifiers. The new RF switches and tunable devices are due in 2011. A multi-mode power amp is slated for 2012.

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