The success implementation of Faraday's 12.5G SerDes PHY development marks the first in a series of joint IP porting projects on UMC's 28nm High-K Metal Gate process nodes and beyond.
UMC, or United Microelectronics Corporation is a foundry chip maker of Taiwan.
By adopting a programmable architecture that covers data transfer rate from 1.25G to 12.5G bit per second, this SerDes IP can readily support emerging 10G/1G xPON applications, which is the "last mile" broadband access through passive optical networks.
On top of that, the IP supports extensive interface standards ranging from SGMII, XAUI, QSGMII, USB 3.1, PCIe 3.0, NVM Express, to SATA 3 by combining respective Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS) circuits. The versatility of the 12.5G programmable SerDes PHY significantly shortens customer's SoC design cycle time on 28HPC U .
"As the complexity of SoC integration increases along advanced process nodes, high-speed SerDes PHY technology has become the crucial building block to address a broad range of high-speed I/O interfaces in SoC applications," said Flash Lin, Chief Operation Officer at Faraday. "28nm High-K Metal Gate technology is widely recognized to be one of foundry industry's longest node, while UMC's 28 HPC U demonstrates superior performance over industry benchmarks. We are happy to expand on our comprehensive portfolio of 28HPC U high speed I/O IP solutions with this 12.5G SerDes, and will extend high quality service to ensure streamlined adoption of this IP solution."
"Faraday currently supplies one of the largest silicon verified IP portfolios across UMC's processes," said S.C. Chien , senior vice president of IP Development and Design Support division at UMC. "Their programmable SerDes PHY is a welcome addition to our 28HPC U platform IP resources to help customers broaden their opportunities in emerging high-growth applications. We are looking forward to expanding our collaboration with Faraday for other IP and process technologies in the future."