Through leveraging the advantages of silicon technology, decades of MEMS resonator experience and in-house analog circuit expertise, SiTime has a distinguished history of achieving industry firsts.
Innovative products are enabled through technology innovation. SiTime has developed a completely novel approach to timing solutions based on an all-silicon platform, allowing for a rapid pace of break-through products. It all begins with an exceptionally strong team of silicon MEMS pioneers, cutting-edge analog circuit expertise and the inherent advantages of silicon.
Inherent Performance Advantages of Silicon over Quartz
Following Moore’s law, SiTime’s silicon MEMS timing products enjoy the performance trajectory of the semiconductor industry. Because silicon processes and design techniques improve at a rapid pace, the performance specifications of silicon MEMS timing devices continue to quickly improve and overtake the performance of quartz-based timing devices.
Silicon fabrication techniques produce devices with sub-micron features and nanometer precision. MEMS resonators, manufactured in silicon fabs, improve as they are made with finer geometries. As CMOS process technologies scale down in size, MEMS resonators can be scaled as well and will continue to see performance improvements. Because silicon MEMS resonators have sub-micron electrode spacing, the electrode gap is reduced as each process generation evolves to smaller geometries. This improves the signal to noise ratio and results in improved phase noise specifications.
Conversely, as quartz crystals are made smaller they perform worse, with lower Q, worse phase noise, more stress sensitivity, worse activity dips and more restricted frequency ranges. Moreover, as crystals are cut smaller they become more difficult to design and manufacture, have lower yields and become more expensive.
SiTime’s MEMS oscillators offer higher performance across a wider spectrum of parameters compared to quartz oscillators. Because quartz devices are optimized for specific parameters, they can not offer the combined performance and features available from MEMS-based solutions.
SiTime MEMS timing solutions offer better features and higher performance in key areas:
