Infineon Announcements of Business and Technology Partnerships, New Products and Research and Development Activities

Jan 27, 2003 | Market News

Munich, Germany – January 27, 2003 – This Infineon News Alert provides summaries of business and technology partnerships to support development of new microcontroller and custom chip solutions as well as new products and a leading edge application at Infineon’s R&D labs. For further information, please refer to the web URLs, or contact the Media Relations department contact named in each summary.

  • Collaboration with Nazomi Communications for Java™ Platform – Acceleration of TriCore™ Processor Systems

  • Infineon Brings Bluetooth Easily to Cars

  • Infineon First to Install Compact Discharge EUV-Source for EUV Resist Development – Major Milestone in Process Development for Next Generation Lithography

  • Sultanate of Oman to Use Infineon’s Chip Card Microcontrollers in Its Smart Identification Card Project


Collaboration with Nazomi Communications for Java™ Platform Acceleration Of TriCore™ Processor Systems


A collaboration with Nazomi Communications, Inc., the inventor of universal and scalable solutions for boosting the performance of software running on the Java Platform, integrates Nazomi’s JA108 Universal Accelerator chip for multimedia applications and the Java™ Platform with a reference evaluation board for TriCore™ Unified Processor Architecture designs. The resulting platform for system and software design will help speed the development of new electronic systems with multimedia capability, such as automotive infotainment and wireless communications devices based on Infineon’s TriCore processor.

“Tests of the JA108 with our TriCore evaluation platform show a 24X improvement in Java code performance using the ECM benchmark,” said Steve Burns, Director of Marketing for 32bit MCU IP Cores at Infineon.

Infineon will make a Java-accelerated TriCore reference platform available as a version of its existing TriCore Starter Kit development system. The TriCore-based platform will be enhanced with a Java Mezzanine Board that includes Nazomi’s JA108 chip as a dedicated co-processor to execute Java bytecode instructions quickly and power-efficiently, accelerating Java software execution by up to 200X depending on application, and a development version of a Nazomi-adapted Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
For further information please contact: core.licensing@infineon.com.
Contact: reiner.schoenrock@infineon.com

Infineon Brings Bluetooth Easily to Cars


Infineon is introducing a complete and easy-to-integrate Bluetooth Communication Gateway (BCG), a solution comprising hardware and software specifically designed for automotive infotainment systems. Integrated into a car radio, for example, the BCG enables hands-free calling without car kit and additional wiring. Priced at about US$40 in quantities of 100,000, the just 30 x 50 mm2 measuring BCG meets the requirements of infotainment system manufacturers worldwide for an easy-to-integrate and cost-effective solution offering the flexibility to adapt new Bluetooth applications. The board offers microcontroller and Digital Signal Processor functionality to perform voice processing such as acoustic echo cancellation and noise reduction. The Bluetooth functionality is implemented using Infineon’s BlueMoon Single, a single-chip Bluetooth baseband and RF transceiver. The BCG hardware was designed in close cooperation with SMART Modular, a Solectron Corporation, and will be manufactured in Solectron facilities. Mecel AB provides the fully qualified Bluetooth wireless technology protocol stack. Philips PSP, a business unit assigned to be acquired by ScanSoft, supplies the voice processing software that supports Infineon’s TriCore™ processor architecture used in the TC1910 controller.
Further information: http://www.infineon.com/bcg; http://www.drivinginnovations.com
Contact: monika.sonntag@infineon.com

Infineon First to Install Compact Discharge EUV-Source for EUV Resist Development – Major Milestone in Process Development for Next Generation Lithography


Infineon has installed a prototype system of the first commercially available compact EUV (Extreme UltraViolet) laboratory exposure system into a cleanroom at a research facility in Erlangen. The tool has been jointly developed with AIXUV - a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Lasertechnology - and is based on AIXUV’s compact EUV-Discharge Lamp. This lamp generates a plasma in a patented gas discharge geometry (hollow cathode triggered Pinch plasma) and emits EUV radiation in the spectral range of 9 to 20 nm in pulses of about 30 ns. The typical source size is approximately 500 micron in diameter and a few mm in length. This is accomplished by heating the working gas (e.g. Xenon, air, oxygen, fluorine etc.) with a current of about 10,000 ampere to temperatures of about 20-30 eV (200,000 – 300,000 K). The EUV-source has an uptime of 100,000,000 pulses (i.e. > 500 hours at 50 Hz).

Laboratory exposure systems like this are essential in the development cycle of a new lithographic technology to enable photoresist material and process development in time. Photoresists are light-sensitive materials that are needed to define the small patterns on the various layers of an integrated circuit. To write these small patterns, different lithography technologies have been used through the last decades. Material and process related issues to be investigated with such a laboratory exposure tool are for example resist sensitivity and contrast, surface and line-edge roughness and resist behaviour at high doses, i. e. unwanted outgassing or crosslinking.

Lithography tools needed for manufacturing chip generations with feature sizes of 50 nm and below are under intensive development throughout the entire semiconductor industry. EUV lithography is the main stream candidate for these dimensions. The EUV technology uses extreme ultraviolet wavelengths as small as 13.5 nm, far below the wavelengths of traditional optical light sources. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) which extends to 2016 and describes the technological and material demands of future chip generations predicts this technology node to be in volume-production from 2007 on.
Further information: http://www.infineon.com
Contact: reiner.schoenrock@infineon.com

Sultanate of Oman to Use Infineon’s Chip Card Microcontrollers in Its Smart Identification Card Project


Infineon Technologies is sole supplier of secure microcontroller chips for use in smart identification (ID) cards being issued by the Government of Sultanate of Oman to about 1.2 million citizens and inhabitants starting in the end of 2003. The ID card will be used for personal identification and authentication, as a drivers license, as a passport and later as emergency health card. The microcontroller chip incorporated into the card securely stores an individual name, address, and data on the digital characteristics of the card holder’s thumbprint. This data only includes the relative position of the fingerprint characteristics and not the fingerprint as a whole. This technique eliminates the possibility of reconstructing the original fingerprint from this data. Infineon’s chip card controller is certified according to the evaluation assurance level EAL5+ in the Common Criteria testing scheme which is highest certification level in existence today.
Further information:
http://www.infineon.com/cgi/ecrm.dll/ecrm/scripts/prod_cat.jsp?oid=-8232
Contact: monika.sonntag@infineon.com

About Infineon


Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for the automotive and industrial sectors, for applications in the wired communications markets, secure mobile solutions as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In fiscal year 2002 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 5.21 billion with about 30,400 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com


Bluetooth and Java are trademarks owned by its proprietor and used by Infineon Technologies under license.

Information Number

INFXX200301.039e