RFMD Opens GaAs HBT Fab

N/Aany%>has announced the opening of a GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor fabrication facility. The opening of this facility completes the transfer of TRW's proprietary GaAs HBT process to RFMD. TRW has exclusively licensed this GaAs HBT process technology to RFMD for the development of wireless components for applications operating under 10 GHz.

"We are very pleased with the overall support we received from TRW and are especially pleased with the performance of the TRW and RFMD process transfer teams," says David Norbury, president and CEO of RFMD. "It was important to build the fab and transfer the process as soon as possible because demand for our GaAs HBT products has been greater than what we could supply for the past eighteen months. The opening of our new fab will greatly increase our GaAs HBT capacity. This will allow us to better serve existing customers as well as expand our customer base."

Commercial production has already started at the new facility. RFMD says that more than one million components have been developed using the GaAs HBT process.

RFMD designs, develops and markets RF ICs for wireless communications applications such as cellular and PCS, cordless, wireless local-area network ,wireless local loop. wireless security, and remote meter reading. The company's products include amplifiers, mixers, modulators/demodulators, and single-chip transceivers.