TPSCO HIGHLIGHTS
TPSCo celebrates first anniversary, enhances technology offerings and its position as leading pure-play foundry in Japan
Guy Eristoff, TPSCo CEO
TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor Co., Ltd. TPSCo celebrated its first anniversary in April. We are very grateful for the terrific support and cooperation of our customers and shareholders.
TPSCo offers leading edge automotive, imaging, RFSOI, power management, embedded NVM and high voltage discrete process flows for differentiated consumer, automotive and industrial applications. Turnkey services include up front design, back end packaging and test as well as standard foundry wafer fab integrated circuit manufacturing using TowerJazz and Panasonic assets.
TPSCo’s technology development center, (PTC) has sucessfully replicated 14 major process platforms from seven IDM customers. We are also currently qualifying the TowerJazz TS18PM Low Rdson LDMOS Epi platform with integrated zero mask adder MTP NVM. Additionally a dual gate HVCMOS variant is being qualified.
All TS18 product family PDKs will be available for mass production in Q32015 using the same PDK IP blocks, and targeting the same SPICE FOMs as the TowerJazz process. Dual-fab, dual region qualified processes support a robust business continuity planning strategy for our automotive and industrial customers, as well as any other customer who demands dual sourcing.
TPSCo has released multiple feature-rich PDKs for foundry customers in the past six months. These include 110nm CMOS, 65nm RFCMOS, 45nm CMOS, 110nm CIS, and 65nm CIS processes. Multiple customers have started designing products with these easy to use PDKs and iPDKs.
Of note, TPSCo is working with TowerJazz to develop a new 300mm RFSOI process, and has achieved world-leading RonCoff performance in just six months. TPSCo plans to release the “Masterswitch” advanced RFSOI PDK for this process in Q42015.
In addition, TPSCo’s Dr. Kenji Okada presented an advanced TDDB reliability study at the International Reliability and Physics Symposium (IRPS) 2015, held on April 19-23 in Monterey, CA, USA. The paper on GOx reliability was entitled, “Intrinsic Mechanism of Non-Linearity in Weibull TDDB Lifetime and its Impact on Lifetime Prediction.” This well-received study was a solid contribution to IRPS 2015.
On March 14, 2015 the Shinkansen, (bullet train) linking Tokyo to Toyama opened for business. Now it takes only about 2 hours and 15 minutes from the Tokyo station to Toyama and the Hokuriku area. This is a major business benefit for TPSCo as it permits convenient transport from the Tokyo metropolitan area. We are pleased this will provide us with the opportunity to introduce our fabs and processing technology to even more customers.
Moving forward into our second year, TPSCo is working hard to enhance its position as a pure-play foundry with world-renowned Japanese quality and IP security.