IDT Demonstrates Industry's First Commercial Piezoelectric MEMS Oscillator
IDT ( www.idt.com , Country Manager for Korea: Sang-Yup Lee), an analog-digital company leading the core mixed-signal semiconductor solutions market, announced today that it has successfully developed and demonstrated the industry's first commercial oscillator integrating a pMEMS (Piezoelectric Microelectromechanical System) resonator. The new oscillator developed and demonstrated by IDT utilizes the high fundamental frequency of the pMEMS resonator, enabling it to effectively replace existing quartz-based oscillators in all applications.


IDT's pMEMS resonator technology combines the strong electromechanical coupling effect of piezoelectric materials with the stability and low damping characteristics of single-crystal silicon to produce passive frequency sources with excellent performance and stability. This device is suitable for cloud computing designs requiring high stability and resistance to shock and vibration, consumer applications requiring multiple outputs, and communications and networking applications requiring low phase jitter.

Dr. Ted Tewksbury, CEO and President of IDT, said, “As a leader in silicon timing solutions, developing MEMS is a natural progression for IDT as we further expand our product portfolio. Through this, we will address the $3 billion quartz crystal market and complement our industry-leading IDT CrystalFree™ CMOS oscillator products.” He stated, “IDT’s piezoelectric MEMS technology is a finished product developed based on more than 40 patents that have been approved or are pending to date. As the MEMS timing market is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, we plan to increase our market share through superior technology and a strong value proposition.”

Jérémie Bouchaud, Director and Principal Analyst for MEMS and Sensors at IHS iSuppli, explained, “MEMS timing is gaining market share by replacing quartz oscillators and crystals and is expanding its application range from consumer devices to telecom infrastructure and HDDs,” and predicted, “Based on an impressive CAGR of 72.3%, the market is expected to grow in revenue from $13.5 million in 2010 to $205 million in 2015.”

IDT's passive pMEMS resonators, invisible to the naked eye, are the industry's smallest sealed wafer-level package (WLP) and are suitable for use in place of larger quartz-based resonators. IDT's pMEMS oscillators will integrate this resonator technology into industry-standard pin- and function-compatible plastic packages, which is expected to shorten time-to-market and increase system design flexibility compared to conventional crystal oscillators.

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IDT is currently demonstrating and sampling pMEMS oscillators to a select group of customers. More information about IDT's pMEMS solutions can be found at www.idt.com/go/MEMS .