News

7 October 2008

 

TriQuint’s GaAs foundry process used for ICs in Large Hadron Collider

RF front-end product maker and foundry services provider TriQuint Semiconductor Inc of Hillsboro, OR, USA says that its technology has been implemented in the design of ICs being used in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN).

The LHC is a 27km-long particle accelerator has been in development for 20 years and includes input from 7000 scientists from 60 countries. Besides pursuing basic physics goals, experiments may help scientists to treat diseases and improve the Internet.

TriQuint’s gallium arsenide foundry process was used by fabless semiconductor firm IPtronics A/S of Roskilde, Denmark, which was established at the end of 2003 by former managers and technical staff from GIGA A/S (sold in 2000 to Intel Corp for $1.25bn). The firm offers ICs for parallel optical interconnects, including transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) and drivers for vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) that enable low-power, high-density, high-bandwidth and low-cost modules for the computer, storage and communications industry.

In the LHC, thousands of Iptronics’ PA8-E GaAs ICs are used as front-end electronics for resistive plate chambers (RPC), a gaseous detector capable of sub-nanosecond time resolution on very large areas. The GaAs-based ICs were shipped to the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and are being used as muon trigger detectors in ATLAS, one of the four experiments being carried out at the LHC.

“It is fascinating to see what can be achieved when great processes and design houses come together,” comments Jesper Bek, IPTronics’ VP of sales & marketing.

See related items:

TriQuint wins $4.5m Navy contract to extend GaAs pHEMTs above 20GHz

TriQuint’s Q2 growth slowed by delayed product ramp

Search: TriQuint GaAs

Visit: www.triquint.com

Visit: www.iptronics.com