Intel and SiTime collaborate to build 5G platforms with MEMS-based silicon timing devices

SiTime Corporation and Intel today announced a collaboration to work together on integrating timing solutions for Intel’s 5G multi-mode radio modems, with additional applicability to Intel LTE, millimeter-wave wireless, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GNSS solutions.

SiTime’s MEMS timing solutions enhance system performance in the presence of stressors such as vibration, high temperature, and rapid thermal transients. Such stressors can disrupt the timing signal and result in network reliability issues, lower data throughput, and even connectivity drops. In providing MEMS solutions to Intel’s 5G modem business, SiTime’s patented MEMS timing technology helps meet the high performance requirements of emerging 5G radio modem platforms.

5G is a critical element of the new data economy. In the next few years, 5G will fundamentally transform our lives, enabling a smarter and more connected society. From smart cities and intelligent wind farms, to agriculture and hospitals, the Internet of Things and connected infrastructures will generate zettabytes of data from an estimated 50 billion devices—more than there are people on earth.

To realize this transformation, networks must become faster, more agile, and much denser, utilizing more equipment. Systems will be deployed closer to connected devices and in uncontrolled locations such as on streetlamps, traffic lights, rooftops, stadiums, and parking garages. In these settings, 5G devices will be subject to environmental stressors such as vibration, high temperature, and rapid temperature changes.

 This creates new, complex, and very high-performance requirements for the timing heartbeat, which will necessitate novel implementations. SiTime’s transformative MEMS timing solutions have proven to offer up to 20 times better robustness, reliability, and performance in the presence of such stressors, and are crucial to the successful deployment of 5G.