Over 65% Smartphone RF Switches SOI, Says Yole; Power Amps Next


By Adele Hars The industry research firm Yole Développement says that more than 65 percent of substrates used in fabricating switches for handsets are SOI-based. This is a high-growth part of the market, putting up double-digit increases. Like a standard SOI wafer, an RF SOI substrate has an active (“top”) layer on which CMOS transistors are built, with an isolating (“BOx”) ... » read more

Over 50% Of Smart Phones And Tablets Leverage SOI


Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ In a recent press release, the SOI wafer leader Soitec said that chips built on its SOI wafers were found in over half of the smartphones and tablets in the market worldwide. 50%? That’s a lot! How do they figure that? The answer: RF. [caption id="attachment_809" align="alignleft" width="549" caption="As seen here... » read more

Wafer Leaders Extend Basis for Global SOI Supply


Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ It’s a bright green light from the world leaders in SOI wafer capacity. Soitec, the world leader in SOI wafer production, and long-time partner Shin-Etsu Handatai (SEH), the world’s biggest producer of silicon wafers, have extended their licensing agreement and expanded their technology cooperation. SEH is a $12... » read more

ST’s FD-SOI Tech Available to All Through GF


Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ In the spring of 2012, STMicroelectronics announced the company would be manufacturing ST-Ericsson’s next-generation (and very successful) NovaThor ARM-based smartphone/tablet processors using 28nm FD-SOI process technology. With first samples coming out this fall, ASN talks to Jean-Marc Chery, Executive Vice Pres... » read more

The Challenges Of 28nm HKMG


28nm Super Low Power (28nm-SLP) is the low power CMOS offering delivered on a bulk silicon substrate for mobile consumer and digital consumer applications. This technology has four Vt's (high, regular, low and super low) for design flexibility with multi-channel length capability and offers the ultimate in small die size and low cost. Multiple SRAM bit cells for high density and high-performanc... » read more

What’s ST’s FD-SOI Technology All About?


As I blogged here on SemiMD last week, STMicroelectronics has announced that to supplement in-house production at their fab in Crolles, the company has tapped GlobalFoundries for high-volume production of 28nm then 20nm FD-SOI mobile devices.  ST will also open access to its FD-SOI technology to GlobalFoundries’ other customers.  High-volume manufacturing will kick off with ST-Ericsson’s ... » read more

ST-Ericsson 28nm FD-SOI smartphone SOC, Q3 tape-out (interview)


ASN recently had a chance to talk to ST-Ericsson’s Chief Chip Architect Louis Tannyeres  about the move to 28nm FD-SOI for smartphones and tablet SOCs.  Take-away message:  FD-SOI solves – with less process complexity – scaling, leakage and variability issues to further shrink CMOS technology beyond 28nm. Here's what he said. ~~ [caption id="attachment_441" align="alignleft" wi... » read more

ST-Ericsson NovaThor This Year, 28nm FDSOI, Soitec Wafers


Big and official FD-SOI news: Soitec has announced that the company is supplying the FD-SOI wafers for ST-Ericsson’s next-generation of NovaThor 8540 smartphone/tablet processors. Starting at the 28nm node, this marks the industry’s first industrialization of the new planar, fully-depleted technology on ultra-thin SOI wafers. Soitec has just issued an official press release, but ST-Eri... » read more

Picture Perfect


For the past five years power/energy efficiency has been a growing concern in the IC world, as well as in the OEM world that has to compete based on battery life. The days when you could plug a phone into the wall at night and be assured you could use it for three days or more without worrying about finding another plug ended with the advent of great displays and more functionality. Since th... » read more

Experts At The Table: Mobile Design Challenges


By Ed Sperling Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss the increasing challenges of designing for mobile devices with Qi Wang, technical marketing group director at Cadence; Cary Chin, director of technical marketing for low-power solutions at Synopsys; Bernard Murphy, CTO of Atrenta; and Dave Reed, senior director of marketing at SpringSoft. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. ... » read more

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