Menlo Microsystem announces three new RF Switch Modules to be manufactured in Lansing
The California based Menlo Microsystems, Inc announced three new switch modules recently at DesignCon in Santa Clara, California, in collaboration with South Korea based high-speed cable company Withwave. The modules include a new line of reflective RF switch modules that reportedly last 1,000 times longer than traditional RF electromechanical relays.
Menlo Micro also announced in July an over $50 million investment to open a fabrication facility at 36 Thornwood Drive in the village of Lansing, just north of the city of Ithaca.
“Once the Ideal Fab is live, we plan to manufacture all switches there,” Menlo Co-founder Chris Giovanniello said in an email Wednesday.
This “Ideal Fab” is located in the Cornell Business & Technology Park, which houses a variety of corporate office and manufacturing buildings.
The company reportedly considered sites in New York, California, Florida and Texas before finding a home in Tompkins County. The company’s investors include nearby Corning Inc., which manufactures glass for the microchip industry.
How will this impact Tompkins County?
The facility is expected to create at least 120 jobs and will bolster New York's emerging semiconductor fabrication hub, according to an announcement from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-NY, and Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Menlo is preparing to begin manufacturing in Lansing this year at the site that formerly housed Kionix Inc., which manufactured micromachines and sensors.
Tompkins County Legislator Mike Sigler, who represents a portion of Lansing, said although the village already attracted Menlo, it will need to brush up the site in the future should they decide to pack up and move to Japan, like Kionix did in 2009.
“We’re excited about Menlo because Kionix was in that spot, I knew that they were going to move into Japan, so it’s great that Menlo was on the docket to come in," he said. "The problem we have there in Lansing is that we don’t have any more natural gas up at that site, so its going to be difficult to attract other business that need natural gas to that area.”
“We need to prepare the ground for these businesses to actually move on,” Sigler continued. “Syracuse did that, they had to prepare the site to attract Micron. It’s the same idea here in Lansing, and it’s the same idea down in Binghamton.”
Sigler said the counties workforce will need a boost too, if it's going to meet the demands of New York’s rapidly growing manufacturing industry.
“If you can get the kind of synergy together that say like San Francisco has; why do high-tech companies move to San Francisco," he asked . "Well because if you lose somebody at Facebook somebody can go and go work over Google.
“They have that kind of talent and if we want to build that kind of talent pool, we need to harness all our universities to do that. Cornell certainly has been a partner, the largest employer in Tompkins with a one-billion-dollar payroll, so you need to be able to communicate well with them about their needs, too.”
About the product
Menlo Micro will complement New York’s growing semiconductor and microchip fabrication industry with this latest line of hyper-efficient switches, used in testing the technology.
“These products are largely used for radio frequency and high-speed applications – such as testing many of the world’s most complex RF and computing chips that go into the latest smart phones, data centers, AI/ML computers – as well as other products ranging from base stations to satellite communications to military communications gear,” Giovanniello said.
More information on Menlo Micro is available on its website.
This article originally appeared on Ithaca Journal: New fab plant coming to Lansing
