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INDUSTRY BUZZ: What’s New. What’s Hot. What’s Next.

• Freescale has introduced and announced accelerated availability of its newest PowerQUICC communications processor, the MPC8596E, based on 45-nm SOI. This high-performance, low-power device allows for a single-chip solution where multiple devices were used before, helping to reduce bill-of-material costs by up to 60 percent, while reducing power consumption by more than 50 percent compared to the previous generation.

• Based on its 3rd generation of high-voltage SOI (EZ-HV) processes developed specially to handle power, analog and digital devices on a single die, NXP has announced:
  
  • A new suite of efficient power supply products including GreenChip PFC and SR controllers to replace energy inefficient diode rectification circuits with cost efficient IC implementation in computing, consumer and industrial power supplies. With over 400 million products in the market, the GreenChip family makes it easier and more cost-effective for power supply manufacturers to comply with energy efficiency specifications such as 80PLUS^® and ENERGY STAR^®.
  
  • For the automotive markets, the TJA1021 is the industry’s first certified LIN 2.1 transceiver, ensuring reliable communication between electronic control units within the car. Thanks to SOI, it virtually eliminates any potentially perilous miscommunication in the electrically noisy and hazardous automotive environment. In addition to its superior energy efficiency and price performance, this level of performance enables manufacturers to build electronic control units without incorporating external ESD protection, thus reducing overall system costs.

• IBM has shipped its 50 millionth SOI-based processor for the Nintendo Wii Game System.

• Under a 5-year agreement, CEA-Leti and IBM will collaborate on semiconductor and nanoelectronics technology research for 22nm and beyond. CEA/Leti, which becomes a research associate of IBM and IBM’s semiconductor Joint Development Alliance ecosystem centered in Albany, N.Y., will reinforce this ecosystem through its specific expertise in low-power, SOI-based CMOS.

GlobalFoundries
Open for Business

GlobalFoundries, a joint venture between AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) has been officially launched. In addition to manufacturing chips for AMD, the new foundry opens the door for a wide range of chip companies to gain early access to volume chip production using leading-edge technologies.

The Dresden cluster, the company’s current primary manufacturing facility, will be re-named Fab 1, with Module 1 initially focused on production of high-performance 45nm SOI technology. Jim Doran has been named senior vice president and general manager of Fab 1.

The company indicates it will continue its longstanding research and development collaboration with IBM, including membership in the IBM joint development alliance for SOI.

• IMEC and CEA-Leti have launched ePIXfab, co-funded by the European Union through the Seventh Framework Program, offering a cost-effective way for researchers and small and medium sized companies to prototype photonic integrated circuits on SOI.

• The Intel research results published in Nature Photonics regarding world-record performance using a silicon-based Avalanche Photodetector (APD) describes continued work on SOI (as detailed in ASN#8). Intel says this opens the door to lowering the cost of optical links running at data rates of 40Gbps or higher and proves, for the first time, that a silicon photonics device can exceed the performance of a device made with traditional, more expensive optical materials such as indium phosphide.

• New from AMD (which builds all its 64-bit microprocessors on SOI):
  
  • the four-core Phenom™ II X4 (up to 3GHz) and Black Edition (3.2GHz) and the triple-core Phenom™ II X3 (up to 2.8GHz) on 45nm SOI, which are at the heart of the “Dragon” platform (with headroom for overclocking), targeting demanding gaming and consumer applications;
  
  • the Athlon™ Neo processor for ultra-thin notebook designs;
  
  • the Athlon™ X2 7850 Black Edition processor for PC users seeking a full-featured product with best-in-class price-performance;
  
  • the 40W ACP AMD Opteron™ EE processor, full-featured energy miser offering 13% power savings, and targeting very dense data center environments;
  
  • the six-core AMD Opteron processor code-named “Istanbul” is slated for delivery in June of this year, months ahead of schedule.

• Qcept Technologies’ ChemetriQ^® 3000, a new breed of non-visual defect (NVD) inspection systems, has been adopted by Soitec, the leading SOI wafer supplier. The ChemetriQ system is being used for incoming quality control of bare silicon wafers and process monitoring of SOI wafers. The two companies have agreed to collaborate on ongoing application development.

• IBM is including LogicVision’s ETMemory™ memory built-in self test (BIST) and on-chip self-repair solution for embedded memory test and yield improvement within its advanced 45nm SOI foundry flow. The ETMemory solution will be recommended by IBM to its 45nm SOI customers to help them in their own design work.

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