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MMIC Design Future in USA - RF Cafe Forums
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guest
Post subject: MMIC Design Future in USA Posted: Sun May 22,
2005 4:13 am
What is the COMMERCIAL future for MMIC Design in the
USA?
Will this be outsourced to Asia as well...
Any advice,
comments or tips welcome!
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Guest
Post subject:
Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 2:25 pm
There is bound to be a good demand
esp in miniaturized radars. What area of MMIC are you working on?
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guest
Post subject: guestPosted: Thu May 26,
2005 7:02 pm
cellular.
that is not a growth market anymore.
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Guest
Post subject: Posted: Fri May 27, 2005
9:18 pm
thats understandable with 3G not getting implemented in
many places. I see UWB, high speed WLAN/MAN etc, automotive radars etc
will mean some demand for awhile. I read somewhere there is research
to find applications at 100 GHz range.
Btw, is CMOS replacing
GaAs for MMIC/RFIC except at the very front-end in commercial applications?
Do you foresee GaAs completely replaced by CMOS, BiCMOS ?
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guest
Post subject: gaas dead againPosted: Sat May
28, 2005 1:28 am
cmos not until 65nm if that, not too much gain
plus other issues.
sige hbt is destroying inp hbt and gaas but
has high noise, poor linearity.
work is ongoing for sige hbt
right now at 100GHz at many schools in north america for fiber and wireless
applications.
gaas only companies have precious little market
left, as is the usual scenario except for military where low noise and
high linearity demands gaas/inp.
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Guest
Post
subject: Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 8:16 am
GaAs still outperforms
SiGe although SiGe has come a long way. I use design SiGe power amps
and everytime we came up with something that matched the performance
of GaAs along came RFMD with a higher performing GaAs PA. The bottom
line is price, at some point SiGe will win out because of the diversity
it allows for integrated chip design, For example alot of these high
efficiency PA desings will have a couple chips in it , a GaAs chip for
the PA and a CMOS chip for the bias control. SiGe, the same cicuitry
can be achieved on one chip. Lower cost. Also, larger wafers are possible
with SiGe, 12" compared to 6-8" GaAs. Again lower cost.
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guest
Post subject: guestPosted: Sat May 28, 2005 5:31 pm
well rfmd is doing well with gaas in the market but outside of cellular
commencially at least there is no low cost application for gaas or for
inp.
sige has pretty much taken it all over, and cmos is closing
fast.
gaas just does power amps? not much to stake a career in
gaas mmic on.
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Guest
Post subject: Posted:
Sun May 29, 2005 8:17 am
How about high power transceiver switches?
No gaas there too?
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guest
Post subject: gonePosted:
Sun May 29, 2005 6:15 pm
wow, that cannot sustain a company. and
cmos switches can't sustain a company.
face is, commercially
and finally gaas is dead. can't stake a company on it anymore.
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Guest
Post subject: Re: gonePosted: Sun May
29, 2005 7:21 pm
guest wrote:
wow, that cannot sustain a company.
and cmos switches can't sustain a company.
face is, commercially
and finally gaas is dead. can't stake a company on it anymore.
So who's making a competitive Si or SiGe PA for GSM or (W)CDMA?
Let me answer that for you - NOBODY.
PAE sucks compared to
GaAs, and battery life/talk time means everything in the cellphone world.
Come back when you have an arguement
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guest
Post subject: guestPosted: Mon May 30, 2005 9:53 pm
listen
the point is not that sige can do PA's. it can't.
the point is
how can 10+ companies and a few staking the whole farm on one application
for gaas commercially? pa's and that's it for commercial gaas.
that was my point.
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Guest
Post subject:
Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 1:06 pm
I'm not sure what company(ies)
you are referring to, but someone like RFMD (since it was mentioned
earlier) has products that span many semiconductor technolgies (just
looked at a datasheet):
Si, Si Bi-CMOS, SiGe, SiGe Bi-CMOS, GaAs,
InGaP, GaN
Other major GaAs companies like Skyworks does too.
So care to name names?
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guest
Post subject:
guestPosted: Tue May 31, 2005 5:56 pm
well more than that i meant
that can you stake a career designing gaas ic's commercially.
and that pa's are the only active block left in gaas still viable
- cmos, sige took everything else over
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Guest
Post subject: Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 9:25 am
SiGe and CMOS
are only good upt 3GHz, maybe 5GHz. Anything higher still needs GaAs.
So companies still need GaAs if they want to build LNB's for the likes
of Direct TV. Not to mention that satellites use GaAs since it is naturally
rad hardened.
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Guest
Post subject: Posted:
Wed Jun 01, 2005 9:43 am
People are doing research to implement
60 GHz transceivers in CMOS; and I am sure we will see that in the not-too-far
future.
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guest
Post subject: out of gaasPosted:
Wed Jun 01, 2005 1:14 pm
exactly, so why stake a career in gaas/inp
COMMERCIALLY any more?
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Guest
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 8:21 am
Because the cost of GaAs is going
down..
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Guest
Post subject: Posted: Thu Jun
02, 2005 8:30 am
...and GaAs can do EVERYTHING that Si can do, but
Si CANNOT do everything that GaAs can!!!
Maybe you're putting
all of your eggs in the wrong basket, dude!
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guest
Post subject: solutionsPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:50 pm
so what
is your solution
build a career in multiple processes?
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Guest
Post subject: Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005
7:16 am
If your a good design in GaAs the transition to other processes
is not difficult. It is a matter to of learning the new design rules.
In fact, it you are a GaAs designer and your company changes it process
ot you go to a different foundry, then you will need to re-learn particular
design rules and models for the different process. Granted they will
be similar. Bottom line is if your a good designer in MMIC, regardless
of the technology, you can make the transition fairly easily.
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Guest
Post subject: Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005
10:49 am
Is it true that you can make the transition - especially
to CMOS? Especially when you see that companies looking to hire CMOS
RFIC engineer specifically ask for CMOS design skills?
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guest
Post subject: RFCMOS HypePosted: Tue Jun 07, 2005
7:16 pm
people have only been doing rf cmos in the last what less
than 10 years?
hard to find someone with a lot of experience
in rf cmos since so few companies have survived doing it!
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Guest
Post subject: Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 8:43
am
Naturally a company is going to want someone with RF CMOS skills,
but if you cant find that person what do you do, say oh well and close
up shop? No, you go to th e next logical choice, hire someone who is
a MMIC designer and expect a 1-2 month learning curve. The design principles
do not change, just the way you fabricate it.
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Guest
Post subject: Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 9:19 am
thats
very encouraging to hear.
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guest
Post subject:
learning curvePosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 7:00 pm
accepting a learning
curve -- is this possible in this economy?
Posted 11/12/2012
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