en.Wedoany.com Reported - GlobalFoundries (GF) has announced that its SLATE wafer-to-wafer bonding technology has achieved production readiness on the industry-leading 9SW RF-SOI (Radio Frequency Silicon on Insulator) platform, enabling advanced 3D integration (3DI) for compact, high-performance cellular front-ends. The technology will be manufactured at GF's 300mm wafer fab in Singapore, with mass production expected to begin in the second half of 2027.

GF's first-generation SLATE technology supports wafer-to-wafer (W2W) bonding, enabling designers to bond two 9SW wafers to stack and integrate large field-effect transistors (FETs) in a vertical architecture. By folding large FETs across bonded wafers, SLATE technology can reduce overall chip size by up to 45%, thereby reducing RF board space and total design area for space-constrained applications in smart mobile devices, including switches, low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), and antenna tuners.

First introduced in 2023, the 9SW RF-SOI platform is GF's most advanced RF front-end module (FEM) solution, covering sub-8GHz and FR3 bands for 5G mobile devices and satellite communications. As GF's fourth-generation XSW technology, 9SW significantly reduces standby current to extend battery life and achieves over 20% efficiency improvement through lower on-resistance and off-capacitance (Ron*Coff).

Shankaran Janardhanan, Senior Vice President of GF's RF Business, stated that deploying SLATE on 9SW represents a significant step in RF integration, enabling customers to design more compact and energy-efficient solutions for next-generation 5G devices without compromising RF performance. He noted that by combining the industry-leading 9SW platform with SLATE advanced packaging technology, new opportunities for innovation in next-generation mobile and wireless applications are being unlocked.

Vinod Kariat, Corporate Vice President of Cadence's Custom IC and PCB Group, stated that the application of GF's SLATE technology on its 9SW platform represents a significant advancement in RF front-end integration, enabling designers to overcome traditional scaling and integration challenges. Through Cadence's Virtuoso Studio for homogeneous integration, analysis, and verification, users can unlock SLATE's 3D integration potential, providing designers with the speed and confidence to bring next-generation 5G front-end modules from concept to silicon.

GF's SLATE wafer-to-wafer bonding technology provides a heterogeneous 3DI roadmap for its differentiated technologies, including FDX FD-SOI, RF-SOI, and silicon germanium (SiGe), enabling more powerful system-level capabilities across diverse markets such as data centers, satellite connectivity, IoT, and mobile devices. Integrated process design kits (PDKs) are available through the GF Connect portal to help accelerate the design process. 9SW and 9SW SLATE can be prototyped through GF's GlobalShuttle multi-project wafer program, with tape-out scheduled to begin in the second half of this year.

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