Boston (MA) - On Monday, nineteen leading semiconductor industry companies came together and created a new group called SOI Industry Consortium (SIC).  The group's goals are aimed at promoting SOI as a viable material, reaching new markets and reducing costs.  The nineteen founding members are a veritable Who's Who list of the semiconductor world.


SOI refers to a manufacturing process used to create a Silicon-On-Insulator, which is silicon on top of an insulating layer, typically SiO₂ (silicon dioxide) or sapphire.  The semiconductor properties of SOI claim to allow smaller features with less power loss and subsequent heat generation than non-SOI, or bulk CMOS solutions, due to less parasitic capacitance and resistance along electrical lines.  SOI also provides the necessary vehicle for the "floating body effect," an SOI peculiarity which is currently being exploited in a new form of very dense, high speed memory technology called Z-RAM.

The consortium's founding members include AMD, ARM, Cadence, CEA-Léti, Chartered, Freescale, IBM, Innovative Silicon, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, NXP (formerly Philips), Samsung, Semico, Soitec, SEH Europe, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, TSMC and UMC.  The group's goals include reaching new customers and industries, spreading the design and technology around a little bit through global collaboration and unifying the SOI industry voice.

The benefits and claims of SOI advantage have been the matter of much debate, however.  For example, AMD has used SOI throughout all of K8's life, aided by technology provided by IBM who also used it in PowerPC.  During that same period of time Intel has never used SOI in their processors, and continues to not use it in them even today.  Yet, the process technology and manufacturing that Intel employs have produced products which are at least as capable as those from AMD in speed and power consumption, despite AMD their having the SOI technology's claimed advantages.  Interestingly though, in 2005 Intel created their first single-chip silicon laser, and it was based on SOI.  Today, Intel is creating 40 Gbps single-module laser modulators built with a rainbow of laser wavelengths based on that early research.

SIO wafers are the raw materials used in semiconductor manufacturing.  They are provided primarily by a French company called Soitech.  In Q1, 2007 Soitech shipped 68.5 million Euros ($97 million) worth of SOI wafer products, making it the single largest SOI maker in the world.

AMD needs IBM....

Oct 11, 2007 16:09     

If you look at it historically AMD has never really prduced their own technologies. Everything AMD has done has been through the benefit of IBM. So they skip the testing phase to see if it is any good and IBM hands them the technologies needed to make decent CPUs. Intel has never relied on IBM for this. They are always trying to find ways to create new products. Like the high-k metal gates they are releasing in Penryn. In this way AMD has an advantage since they save money in R&D on process and put more of it towards the acctual CPU. But I prefer Intels method since they tend to be able to match AMD at their game even though AMD states they have a superior product/process.

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One advantage AMD is maintaining

Oct 13, 2007 07:21     

One advantage AMD is maintaining since they came out with the Athlon 64 CPUs is higher performance per watt. Pentium 4s were horrendous at running hot. And it is the same with the current different quad core CPUs. The native quad core of AMDs Barcelona is more energy efficient and cooler than the two dual cores on one package approach done by Intel, which really was just a stop gap measure to keep AMD from saying they had the first quad core CPU. AMD already was the first to 1 Ghz, and the first multi-core CPU, with native dual core CPUs. So Intels main reason for doing much of what they have done recently, since the inception of the Pentium 4 was to keep AMD from claiming the first iteration of certain CPUs. For instance, they used the flawed netburst architecture so they could ramp it up in speed faster than AMD, did it no matter how bad of a design it was and it nearly ruined the company. Intel staved it off AMD getting more market share by a large part through illegal trade practices, as determined by several international courts. Now they have the double dual core Quad CPUs, again, a bad design, particularly in the area of performance per watt, but it served the purpose of beating AMD to a quad core CPU. But to say that one R&D philosophy is better or worse than another is neither here nor there. It's whatever works for a particular company. And it appears it works clearly well for Intel to do it their way and it clearly works for the way AMD does it.

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if Intel really do not need SOI why they build sing...

Oct 15, 2007 03:42     

if Intel really do not need SOI why they build single laser module based on SOI? Intel has advantage in terms of monetary. AMD must rely on IBM to reduce the R&D cost for sure. Joint venture in R&D is the way to cut cost and keep competitive in the industry since IBM would not come out x86 cpu, it won't hurt both parties in joining venture to research something that can bring benefits.
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