17 November 2010

Plextek re-designs obsolete GaAs ICs to avoid board re-design

Electronics and communications design consultancy Plextek Ltd of Cambridge, UK says that it has re-designed two gallium arsenide ICs for a major US-based high-technology company after the original devices, which are used in a large number of different boards and products, became obsolete and could no longer be sourced.

Plextek says that the firm was hence able to avoid the expensive process of completely re-designing its various boards and products to accommodate a replacement IC and could instead cost-effectively source direct drop-in replacements with no change to the performance specifications.

Previously, Plextek had provided GaAs IC design services to the company and was approached again when the new requirement arose. It says that, as a result of its detailed knowledge of the commercial GaAs industry, it was able to quickly select a suitable commercially available process, design and layout pin-compatible direct replacement ICs, and arrange packaging and test to ensure that the replacement ICs would be available in the required timescales.

In creating the re-designed devices, Plextek identified and worked closely with US pure-play foundry Global Communication Semiconductors Inc (GCS) of Torrance, CA, USA (with which it formed a strategic alliance in 2002) and Cirtek, a packaging firm based in the Philippines.

“Plextek’s vast experience in IC design enables us to source and redesign obsolete ICs with minimum disruption and help companies avoid an expensive and time-consuming product redesign,” says Liam Devlin, Plextek’s director of RF Integration. “In this case our replacement IC was not only able to drop in to the original product without disruption, but resulted in higher isolation and lower leakage compared to the part it replaced.”

Tags: Plextek GaAs ICs

Visit: www.plextek.com