Technology challenges for communications systems chips

In the era of 0.25 /spl mu/m and finer feature sizes, the IC industry has seen the advent of true systems chips (SoCs) where traditionally disparate functions-e.g., processors, logic, programmable elements, analog, RF, memory-are integrated monolithically to perform an applications level task. In addition to traditional VLSI scaling issues, SoCs present many special and sometimes unique technology challenges. This contribution focuses on those related to process technologies with a special focus on communications applications arguably the new driver of the IC industry.