CAPABILITY SUMMARY
AMCC interface circuits, transceiver chips and
switches are designed to implement emerging net-
work technologies such as the ANSI Fibre Channel
and High Performance Interface (HIPPI) standards,
the ITU SONET telecommunications standard, the
ATM Forum LAN standard and IEEE Gigabit
Ethernet standard. Jitter, speed, power and size are
critical design issues for all these circuits. AMCC’s
devices are based on its unique Bipolar process
which has noise isolation characteristics that enable
best-in-class jitter performances. The inherent physi-
cal structure of the company’s process makes 1 to 3
GigaHertz (GHz) data rates possible at low power.
Consequently, the low device power consumption of
AMCC’s products helps to minimize the cost and
size of packaging.
Precision Clock and Timing Products
AMCC provides a line of high precision clock and
timing standard products for exacting system de-
signs. AMCC has also tailored clock and timing
devices to specific customer needs for high perfor-
mance clock generation and distribution, clock
synchronization and de-skewing, frequency synthe-
sis, and pulse shaping applications. Offerings
include low EMI, low skew clock drivers and low jitter
clock generators for high performance server, work-
station and RAMBUS™-based applications.
Manufacturing Excellence
AMCC manufactures its own Bipolar and BiCMOS
wafers using proven processes and utilizes foundry
relationships for access to CMOS capability in its
world class fab located in San Diego. AMCC is proud
of its best-in-class status for lowest defect densities
for like sized fabs. This allows AMCC to provide a
continuous, predictable supply of product to its cus-
tomers.
Peripheral Component Interconnect
(PCI) Bus Controllers
Increasing bandwidth of high speed networks cre-
ates a bottleneck at the desktop. One of the causes
of this problem is the latency associated with con-
nection to high speed peripheral equipment over
LANs and WANs. The 132 Megabyte per second
backplane PCI bus helps break the bottleneck.
The Company follows a “semi-fabbed” manufactur-
ing strategy and has CMOS and BiCMOS foundry
relationships in place with major domestic and inter-
national semiconductor partners that provide for
significant additional production capacity. Wafer pur-
chases from strategic foundry partners both expand
capacity and provide alternate sources. Additional
high-volume assembly and test facilities are located
offshore.
AMCC has developed the industry’s first line of gen-
eral purpose master/slave controllers for the PCI
bus. These circuits provide a high performance
single-chip interface for add-on boards and adapter
cards for industrial, graphics, video and communica-
tions markets.
AMCC’s “quick turn, semi-fabbed” manufacturing ap-
proach blends together the strengths of both the
“fabbed” and “fabless” semiconductor strategies.
Fabbed advantages include the security of total in-
house control and time to market. Fabless
advantages include multiple sourcing and allows the
company to focus investment on new high perfor-
mance products.
Applied Micro Circuits Corporation
6290 Sequence Drive, San Diego, CA 92121-4358
1-4
AMCC [ APPLIED MICRO CIRCUITS CORPORATION ]
