An increasing percentage of SoC die area is being allocated to memory arrays, as applications require more data/instruction storage and boot firmware. Indeed, foundries invest considerable R&D resources into optimizing their array technology IP offerings, often with more aggressive device features than used for other… Read More
Highlights of the 28nm FD-SOI San Jose Presentations
Most of the presentations from the FD-SOI Symposium in San Jose last month (April 2016) are now available on the SOI Consortium website (click here to see the full list — if they’re posted, you can download them freely from there). If you don’t have time to wade through them all, here are some of the highlights. … Read More
Why is NXP Moving to FD-SOI?
The latest generations of power efficient and full-featured applications processors in NXP’s very successful and broadly deployed i.MX platform are being manufactured on 28nm FD-SOI. The new i.MX 7 series leverages the 32-bit ARM v7-A core, targeting the general embedded, e-reader, medical, wearable and IoT markets, where… Read More
3D NAND – Moore’s Law in the third dimension
For more than a decade 2D NAND has been the leading driver of lithography shrinks, for example, Samsung went from 120nm in 2003 to 16nm in 2014 with shrinks on an almost yearly basis, but the shrinks came at a price. At 16nm Self Aligned Quadruple Pattering (SAQP) was required for the most critical layers and patterning related costs… Read More
Samsung 10nm and 7nm Strategy Explained!
Samsung Foundry had an intimate gathering recently for 200 customers and partners that I missed, but I know several people who attended. This event was a precursor to #53DAC where Samsung has the largest foundry presence. I was able to clarify what I had heard via a phone call with Kelvin Low so here is my version of what is important:… Read More
ARM and FD-SOI are like Peanut Butter and Jelly!
When I first heard about a foundry possibly licensing FD-SOI I would have bet it was SMIC in China. What better market for a low cost, low power, easy to manufacture alternative to FinFETs? The foundry of course was Samsung which also made complete sense since they have 28nm gate-first capacity that matches up nicely to 28nm FD-SOI.… Read More
EUV is coming but will we need it?
I have written multiple articles about this year’s SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference describing all of the progress EUV has made in the last year. Source power is improving, photoresists are getting faster, prototype pellicles are in testing, multiple sites around the world are exposing wafers by the thousands and more. … Read More
In the Valley & thinking about FD-SOI for your next chip design? Epic (and free) symposium 13 April
If you’re in the chip biz in Silicon Valley, check out the SOI Consortium FD-SOI Symposium on April 13th in San Jose. They’ve been running these things since 2009, and I have to say that this one is the most comprehensive to date. Headliners include Cisco, Sony, NXP, SigmaDesigns, ARM, Ciena plus the big FD-SOI foundries,… Read More
10nm SRAM Projections – Who will lead
At ISSCC this year Samsung published a paper entitled “A 10nm FinFET 128Mb SRAM with Assist Adjustment System for Power, Performance, and Area Optimization. In the paper Samsung disclosed a high density 6T SRAM cell size of 0.040µm[SUP]2[/SUP]. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how this cell size stacks … Read More
Positive pointers from Samsung, GF, Renesas, NXP/Freescale, ST, Soitec – so will 2016 be the year of FD-SOI?
A little over a month into 2016 and we already have a raft of FD-SOI news from Samsung, GlobalFoundries, NXP/Freescale, Renesas and more. Quite a bit of it came out of the recent SOI Consortium forum in Tokyo. Many of the presentations are now available on the SOI Consortium website (click here to see what’s there) – but keep checking… Read More