Michael Gruver, Program Manager, IBM Engineering & Technology Solutions, gives his perspective on foundry customers and custom SOI design. Advanced Substrate News: What tools or investments would a customer need if they were going for an SOI-based solution? Michael Gruver: There are two primary areas that a customer should address if they intend to use …

Top honors go to advanced substrate pioneers – again. For the second year in a row, the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) gave the J.J. Ebers Award for “…outstanding technical contributions to electron devices” to an SOI pioneer. The 2005 honor went to Bijan Davari of IBM, now Vice President of Next Generation Computing Systems/Technology. …

Company received top White House medal and SI Fab of the Year. Recently, IBM has been lining up awards for technology leadership, often citing the company’s work in SOI. IBM’s 300-mm, SOI-enabled Building 323 in East Fishkill, NY, was selected as the Semiconductor International 2005 Top Fab Award winner. According to the publication, “IBM has …

IBM, Sony/SCEI and Toshiba are actively encouraging the proliferation of CELL applications   The most celebrated of Cell applications, Sony’s PlayStation® 3, is due out next spring. In the meantime, the SOI-based Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) microprocessor, as it is officially known, is getting a big push from its joint developers: Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. …

Microsoft’s custom PowerPC chip by IBM is based on SOI   Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which is expected to fly out of the stores this holiday season, has some very impressive figures to cite. The three-core PowerPC-based CPU, custom-made for Microsoft by IBM, boasts one teraflop of floating-point performance.

• IBM has started shipping its new System z9 mainframe line, the first of a new generation of mainframes based on CMOS 10S-SOI technology.

• Following the premier of its Xbox 360 TM video game and entertainment system, Microsoft confirmed that the unit is built around an IBM PowerPC-based CPU with three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each. The latest IBM PowerPC process technology integrates strained silicon and SOI. The new xBox will hit the stores in time …

• IBM will offer new design services to help companies integrate the SOI-based Cell technology into a wide range of electronics products – especially image-intensive applications in the aerospace, defense, industrial and medical segments.

IBM is reaping the benefits of its long SOI history. In 1998, IBM announced that after years of research, it had “perfected” SOI, and would incorporate it into custom and standard products. “We believe SOI, with its high- performance and low-power characteristics, is a significant breakthrough in chip technology,” said Mike Attardo, General Manager, IBM …

Pilot production of Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing’s first 300-mm facility includes the 90nm SOI process tuned to IBM’s high-performance product needs.