Lucent Technologies Inc.’s Microelectronics Group said its new system-on-a-chip process could result in wireless phones that operate for a month without needing recharging.
The company announced a .13 micron fabrication process that will offer communications chips with density and power at cost-effective levels. Using module CMOS IC technology, Lucent said its new COM-2 process will provide single-chip solutions for networks that operate at multigigabit speeds. Chips can reach a record density level of 160 million transistors and consume low levels of power.
“COM-2 is an evolution of CMOS technology. We focus on density, speed and power that is critical to so many wireless-application products,” said Tony Parker, ASIC product line manager with Lucent. “The challenge in wireless is managing power without compromising performance … This technology is delivering on that.”
Lucent said wireless phone manufacturers will be able to combine on a single chip all the circuitry needed to transmit and receive calls, including high-performance radio-frequency elements that have previously been implemented on separate chips.
“When we’re talking about single-chip radios, we’re saying these things can be embedded into a wristwatch,” said Parker.
The COM-2 process will allow network equipment manufacturers to put on a single chip all the circuitry they need to send and receive data at 10 gigabits per second. This is fast enough to carry 160,000 telephone calls, and it is four times faster than the data rates handled by today’s single-chip designs, said the company.
Lucent said the COM-2 process could cut power consumption in key components such as digital signal processors by threefold while more than doubling performance. DSPs fabricated in today’s quarter-micron technology, for example, perform in the 80 million-instruction-per-second range (MIPS) and consume about 720 microwatts per MIPS at 1.5 volts. At an even lower 1.0 volt, DSPs will approach 150 MIPS and consume less than 110 microwatts per MIPS.
This kind of performance will push third-generation mobile communications standards that will support applications such as Web browsing and full-motion video on handheld portable information devices, said the company. This level of performance could even make practical such processing-intensive functions as speech recognition in handheld devices.
Lucent plans to fabricate its first .13-micron chip models in the second half of next year, with volume production ramping up in the first half of 2000.
