The results of the most recent SOI Consortium benchmarking study detail the interest of planar FD-SOI as early as the 28nm and 20nm technology nodes, in terms of performance, power and manufacturability. This 3-part blog series looks further at some of the implications. Chipmakers constantly have to manage risk.  Generally it is sensible not to …

Want to learn first-hand what’s going on in the world of FD-SOI? (aka Fully-Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator) The SOI Industry Consortium, CEA-Leti and Soitec are organizing the 6th edition of the Fully Depleted Workshop. Presentations will be given by experts from ST, ARM, IBM, Leti, UCBerkeley, Soitec, Accelicon & the SOI Consortium. It’s a full-day event at …

Excellent news:  the first chips produced at GlobalFoundries’ “Fab 8″ in upstate New York are based on IBM’s latest, 32nm SOI chip technology. In a joint press release, the two companies announced that the chips will be used by customers in networking, gaming and graphics. While the new chips began initial production at IBM’s 300mm …

IBM will produce Micron‘s Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) in the debut of the first commercial, 3D chip-making. HMC parts will be manufactured at IBM’s advanced semiconductor fab in East Fishkill, N.Y., using the company’s 32nm SOI HKMG process technology.

IBM‘s SOI-based BlueGene/Q takes the top 5 spots on the latest “Green500” list of energy-efficient supercomputers.

The IEEE is once again giving two of its most prestigious awards to some of the SOI and advanced substrate industry’s leading figures. There are few greater honors in engineering than the IEEE  Technical Field Awards (TFAs). And once again, people who work in advanced substrates are among the recipients of two major awards: the …

The 2011 IEEE SOI Conference, held in Tempe, AZ last week was not one to miss…but I did. Happily, I got the papers right away, along with observations shared by some of the folks who did get there. Highlights include excellent and insightful papers from ST, ARM, IBM, Intel, Peregrine and GlobalFoundries, plus many more that indicate …

What are you going to do with your SOCs at 20/22nm? The options seem to boil down to just staying on bulk CMOS, or changing to FinFETs or planar, fully-depleted (FD) SOI-based CMOS. Though some may find comfort in staying on bulk CMOS, it’s getting very complicated – and complicated get expensive fast. The FinFET …

Built on 45nm SOI CMOS by IBM researchers, a new generation of neurosynaptic computing chips is designed to emulate the brain’s abilities for perception, action and cognition. The next phase of the project has received $21 million in new funding from DARPA.

Leveraging IBM’s RF SOI process, fabless RDA Microelectronics of Shanghai developed the RDASW91, the world’s first single-pole, nine-throw (SP9T) antenna switch with an integrated logic decoder and low pass filters in a single die solution. The target is the fast-growing multiband 3G handset market, wherein SOI offers superior performance and significant cost reduction compared to …