SOI, FD vs. PD

slacker (s@lack.er) on 4/30/12 wrote:
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>David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 4/30/12 wrote:
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>>For example, STMicro has committed to using FD-SOI for their products going forward.
>>However, they are not shipping any chips manufactured using FD-SOI. As I mentioned,
>>Intel is shipping millions of IVB using FinFETs.
>
>This point is unfair. Intel is ahead of everyone. You'll have to wait longer than
>this to see if STM will abandon FD-SOI (which I think is highly unlikely given all
>the noise they've made about it over the past 4 months).

I don't think they will abandon FD-SOI. But my point is that they are going to start production in 2013, and it's a fairly low performance process. The higher performance variants using strain or FinFETs won't arrive till a year or two later.

>Just last week, TSMC said their 28nm (planar) process only accounted for 5% of
>their revenues. It's still early in the 'commercial shipment stage' for 28nm products.
>For the evidence of commitment you're looking for, you need >to give STM more time.

>>I know that TI and Samsung are using body bias, and STMicro clearly intends to
>>do so. However, high performance products generally don't. Body bias isn't used
>>by Intel, AMD, IBM, Oracle or Nvidia for CPUs/GPUs. I don't believe it is used by Qualcomm either.
>
>FD-SOI responds strongly to back-biasing techniques (both to increase I_on, and
>reduce I_off). As well, the effectiveness of back-biasing techniques are not diminished
>due to scaling effects in FD-SOI. In contrast, back-biasing >on planar bulk processes
>are not very effective at sub-100nm gate lengths.

Is body biasing equally as robust for PD-SOI?

David