The foundry's new double poly-silicon H-Series has a full complement of RF-compatible passive components including low-capacitance resistors, high-quality capacitors and inductors. Full-power, low-voltage, low-noise integrated solutions are available for performance analogue applications up to and higher than 2.5GHz.

"These improvements to our core H-Series wafer fabrication processes put us ahead of the competition in terms of die efficiency, design flexibility, consistency in process technology and die size," said Dr. Peter Osborne, chief technology officer, Zarlink Analog Foundry. "Revisions to the metallization and via rules enable designers to shrink the die size and optimise the layout for very high-speed analogue components."

Zarlink Analog Foundry reports that it is benefiting from the current round of restructuring. Some restructured foundries have caused capacity constraints for companies requiring smaller wafer runs and hard-to-manufacture specialty chips, as well as continuity-of-supply concerns.

The H-Series processes were first designed for analog RF components used in signal processing applications. The fully qualified improvements to H-Series processes boost the performance and lower the system cost of high-speed, high-performance consumer products and wireless applications.

All the H-Series process technologies are available with full design support kits incorporating advanced component models. Zarlink's H-Series technology is also available for low-cost prototyping using a multi-project wafer processing service.