Curt Barratt, division vice president of wafer fab operations of RF Micro Devices, said, “The migration to 6-in. manufacturing represents the realization of a major initiative launched by RF Micro Devices to reduce manufacturing costs. Notably, the conversion to 6-in. wafers will more than double the number of die per wafer without a significant increase in processing cost per wafer. Just as increased diameter wafers have been shown to reduce costs in the silicon industry, our GaAs manufacturing will benefit from the lower production costs available from 6-in. GaAs wafers. We are pleased to have brought up this additional, lower-cost capacity, which we anticipate will be necessary in the future for us to meet increasing customer demand.”

Barratt continued, “As the demand for modules increases and as module products become more highly integrated, we expect that the percentage of our products' bill of materials (BOM) represented by our GaAs HBT process technology will continue to grow. By reducing the costs of our GaAs HBT process technology, we expect to favorably impact gross profit margins across multiple, high-running GaAs HBT-based products.”

For more information, visit www.rfmd.com.

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