14 DAY TRIAL // Abilis Systems, a Swiss TV tuner specialist, has signed an agreement with IBM Microelectronics regarding future manufacturing of the latter's mobile digital TV chips for use in handsets and notebooks, informs Electronics Weekly.
According to the company representative's statements, IBM upcoming products will also benefit from an RF clock synthesizer offered by Abilis, an innovation of the manufacurer. "We have chosen IBM for the high performances of their RF CMOS process and the quality of the RF design kit which have been key to achieve our technical and time-to-market objectives," said Yves Mathys, Abilis CEO.
Abilis Systems representatives added that the company is one of the first manufacturers to add to the 90nm RF CMOS process a single-chip mobile TV design integrating both the RF tuner and a demodulator.
"We are also very pleased to welcome Abilis' RF synthesizer IP into IBM foundry's Ready for IBM Technology (RFIT) program. Leading edge third party IP remains a key part of IBM's foundry offering," said Adrian O'Connor, European sales director for semiconductors, IBM Systems and Technology Group, cited by Electronics Weekly.
Last month, IBM Corp. and the Georgia Institute of Technology announced they have surpassed the silicon speed record by developing a so called "frozen chip".
The researchers expect this new technology to become the core of a new series of powerful, low-energy chips which will support enhanced applications such as HDTV onto mobiles and other small size devices.
"For the first time, Georgia Tech and IBM have demonstrated that speeds of half a trillion cycles per second can be achieved in a commercial silicon-based technology, using large wafers and silicon-compatible low-cost manufacturing techniques," said John Cressler, Byers Professor in Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a researcher in the Georgia Electronic Design Center at Georgia Tech.