Soitec and ST-Ericsson to use novel FD semiconductor technology to extend battery life
With market demands currently soaring, chip makers are rushing to develop the next generation of faster, more power-efficient processors. Now Soitec is introducing a comprehensive product roadmap centred on fully depleted (FD) silicon technology between the 28nm and 10nm nodes.
Soitec says FD is the industry solution that will to continue packing ever increasing performance into silicon chips to enhance user experience. Soitec reckons its FD product lines enable the most efficient implementation of fully depleted technology, allowing semiconductor manufacturers to deliver competitive products faster and more affordably than ever before. For the mobile market, this is expected to result in innovative consumer devices that offer new user experiences such as augmented reality while requiring fewer battery charges.
According to Soitec, it's new entire semiconductor ecosystem will accelerate the development and lower the cost of the high-performance and low-power processors that will drive future generations of mobile and consumer electronics. The firm is working with its partners to make this technology widely available to support industry demand.
"Each new generation of technology faces unique challenges, and we currently are at an inflection point where we cannot rely solely on traditional CMOS technology to solve them," notes aid Handel Jones, founder and CEO of International Business Strategies.
"If you look at the industry's technology migration path, you can see that everybody has fully depleted in their respective roadmaps. What Soitec is offering is a very attractive solution giving chip makers the means to reduce power consumption, increase performance and provide lower cost solutions."
The main challenge faced by the semiconductor industry today is a disappointing cost-benefit ratio, with limited gains in performance, power consumption and cost per transistor. This all comes with increasingly high development costs.
These pressures mean the semiconductor industry requires fully depleted solutions. Soitec believes its FD products integrate critical characteristics of the FD transistors and give chip makers the means to move to FD. With a comprehensive offer addressing both planar and three-dimensional (FinFET) transistor alternatives, Soitec's FD products enable greater cost optimisation, performance and scalability for next-generation processor platforms.
"Smartphones and tablets are selling at an amazing pace, and consumers have become accustomed to a new and improved user experience every 12 to 18 months, which makes innovation around performance and battery life the most critical competitive advantage," comments André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, president and CEO of Soitec.
"It's increasingly clear that conventional CMOS technology has run its course. To win this battle, industry players need a fresh approach that provides a path to overcome the limitations of current technology. Soitec has products available now that bring the advantages of next generation performance and energy efficiency today at the right economics providing chip makers the ability to bring their visions for future devices to life."
In the first implementation of these FD products from Soitec, STMicroelectronics and ST-Ericsson have announced they are working together, with Soitec, to develop next-generation mobile processors at 28nm. By using fully depleted transistor technology, ST-Ericsson expects to gain, for example, one additional day of smartphone battery life for the new processors.
