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).

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.


In regards to the broader FinFET vs. FD-SOI debate being discussed in this thread, I have no opinion to offer.