Nujira extends foundry partnership with TowerJazz for volume production of envelope tracking IC
ET is the leading technology being developed to reduce power consumption of 4G smartphones in order to extend battery life. ET dynamically adapts the power amplifier (PA) supply voltage to the signal amplitude, and thus dramatically reducing the power consumption of the PA that transmits the signal to the antenna.
Anyone who uses 4G phones experiences an empty battery much earlier than with 3G, sometimes in the middle of the day. There are several technologies being developed in order to reduce power consumption of such phones, but recently ET interfaces have become standardized on LTE basebands, which paves the way to a very high adoption rate of this technology. Nujira is the leading company in ET and therefore is well positioned to take a large portion of the market. According to global information provider, IHS, the annual revenue for analog application specific ICs for 4G mobile handsets is forecast to grow from $827 million in 2012 to $2.9 billion by 2017, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29% for the next five years.
Nujira selected TowerJazz, the number one specialty foundry and fifth largest foundry worldwide, as its manufacturing partner in early 2012. With the launch of the NCT-L1300 ET modulator IC last month, the partnership is being extended as the new chip is geared up for volume production to support 4G smartphone shipments in 2014. The NCT-L1300 is fabricated in TowerJazz’s proven 0.18 micron RF CMOS technology, used in hundreds of millions of RF front end devices, with additional uniquely fitted HV modules. The NCT-L1300 delivers the best ET performance on the market across all key metrics and delivers power conversion efficiencies in excess of 80%, effectively doubling the efficiency of existing solutions.
“Nujira’s technology has huge potential, with ET technology heading towards a 100% attach rate in LTE smartphones in 2014. We are excited to be their partner and to be supporting them in volume production of their NCT-L1300. Nujira’s chips combine wireless communications and smart energy, which are two high growth focus areas for TowerJazz,” said Russell Ellwanger, TowerJazz CEO. “As one of the world’s largest foundries and with capacity on three continents, TowerJazz offers a unique combination of speciality processes and wafer capacity, enabling high growth fabless IC companies like Nujira to rely on us as their silicon supplier.”
The NCT-L1300 is packaged in a low-profile wafer-level chip scale package, and started sampling to lead customers in June.
www.nujira.com
www.towerjazz.com
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