Specialty foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Nasdaq: TSEM; TASE: TSEM), which markets under the name TowerJazz, has expanded its strategic collaboration with Avago Technologies (NASDAQ: AVGO), which supplies interface components for wireless, wireline, and industrial applications.
The expanded cooperation will focus on Avago’s next generation products using Tower's SiGe BiCMOS technology platform. Continued collaboration will enable Avago Fiber Optic Products Division (FOPD) to achieve the stringent technical specifications and meet cost and performance requirements for optical networking markets while helping Tower to define and develop its next-generation process technologies.
The technology collaboration between Tower and Avago led to Avago’s recent successful launch of the Gen4SR product, a 10Gbps small form factor pluggable optical transceiver (SFP) for short reach applications. Through the collaboration, Avago has unlimited access to TowerJazz’s optimized SiGe BiCMOS technology based on both the SBC18H2 process with transistor speeds of 200GHz and H3 process with transistor speeds of 280GHz together with mixed-signal CMOS.
Market sources believe that the expanded collaboration will enable Tower to double revenue in this field, which is already worth millions of dollars annually.
Avago senior R&D director IC engineering fiber optic products division Dr. Faouzi Chaahoub said, "TowerJazz’s advanced technology enables Avago Technologies to define and develop a plethora of new products, increasing our market share with existing and new customers. Avago’s 10Gbps SFP+ chipset is the first product released deploying TowerJazz’s technology. Our collaboration with TowerJazz using their high performance SiGe BICMOS will enable us to develop the highest performance and the lowest power ICs for Avago’s next generation optical transceivers beyond 10Gbps."
Tower SVP and general manager RF/high performance analog business unit Marco Racanelli said, "We are fortunate to have a technology partner such as Avago FOPD who continually pushes the technology envelope and drives TowerJazz to excellence. Our high performance SiGe is uniquely positioned in the fiber optic space where we offer customers the highest speed, lowest power consumption and lowest noise SiGe transistors integrated in analog-friendly 0.18um and 0.13um nodes."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 21, 2013
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2013