TEXT-Tower Semi's Jazz expands tuner output for flat TVs

(The following was issued by Israel's Tower Semiconductor Ltd (TSEM.O) (TSEM.TA)):

May 21 - Xceive Corporation, the market leader in hybrid silicon tuners with proven success in PC, television and the digital home, and Jazz Semiconductor, a Tower Group company (NASDAQ: TSEM, TASE: TSEM), and the leader in Analog-Intensive Mixed-Signal (AIMS) foundry solutions today announced volume production with Xceive's Silicon Tuner, the XC5000, recently selected by LG for its high-end flat panel TVs.

Xceive leveraged Jazz's 0.18-micron SiGe BiCMOS process (SBC18) for its next-generation of silicon tuners to achieve unprecedented size reduction and outstanding performance where both analog and digital reception is required.

XC5000 is the most highly integrated single chip silicon terrestrial TV class tuner with all filtering and analog demod (Vif/Sif) on chip as well.

The tuner benchmarks favorably against traditional shielded discrete hybrid analog/digital implementations (CAN tuners) by tier one TV manufacturers and successfully met and exceeded LG's rigorous performance tests.

The XC5000 is the only global hybrid TV tuner with an on-board DSP controller and unique architecture and is the first of its kind to meet mainstream production requirements for flat screen TVs across all regions, providing world-class tuner performance for all major analog and digital broadcast standards.

Xceive's multi-standard tuner solutions have proven to be a critical component for optimized reception and sensitivity in a compact size for TV production worldwide.

LG chose Xceive's XC5000 for its LCD and plasma screens ranging from 22 to 60 inches.

The addition of smart tuner architecture on board helps reduce engineering costs across multiple regional products and reduce return rate due to tight production tolerances, protecting customers from product variances susceptible in CAN-based TVs.

Also, the XC5000's extremely small size (7x7mm) and footprint allows LG to deliver slimmer TV designs with a lower BOM.

Jazz Semiconductor's SBC18 process was used in this demanding silicon tuner application to increase performance in a variety of areas including enabling faster channel acquisition and better filtering for adjacent channel rejection.

The SBC18 process was specifically designed for the efficient integration of RF receivers by combining two low-noise, high dynamic range, low power SiGe (NPN) transistors together with high-density, 1.8V and 3.3V mixed signal CMOS and a wealth of options including: lateral and vertical PNP transistors, high quality passive elements such as MIM capacitors, resistors (poly and metal), deep trench and triple well isolation, and up to six layers of metal with thick top metal for high Q inductors.

"We are very pleased with the performance of our breakthrough tuner technology as evidenced in the latest LG flat panel TVs and made possible by Jazz Semiconductor's high performance 0.18um SiGe BiCMOS process," said Jean-Louis Bories, CEO of Xceive. "In addition, their world-class design enablement tools helped us achieve fast time-to-market while integrating high levels of functionality into our award-winning product."

"We are thrilled with the results of our collaboration with Xceive to deliver its one-of-a-kind hybrid silicon tuner using our SBC18 process, ideally suited for high performance products," said Chuck Fox, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing, Tower and Jazz Semiconductor. "By integrating high levels of functionality on the same wafer, customers like Xceive can achieve new circuit benchmarks for gain, noise figure and linearity to be attained at a cost that is competitive with previous-generation solutions."