By: tarlinian (tarlinian.delete@this.gmail.com), April 23, 2015 12:54 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
David Kanter (dkanter.delete@this.realworldtech.com) on April 23, 2015 12:28 pm wrote:
> There was a paper at VLSI 2012 that demonstrated at fixed 100nA/um Ioff, that planar InGaAs is about
> 50% better than silicon at 0.5V Vcc. That is with III-V QWFETs that have 1.6X higher Rext.
>
> They also had simulated results that looked even better, but those required QWFETs
> with comparable Rext and EOT as the silicon (which might be optimistic).
>
> The paper is III-V Field Effect Transistors for Future Ultra-Low Power
> Applications by G. Dewey, et al. if you want to look it up.
The comparison in that paper is completely unfair. They're comparing a thin body III-V device to a bulk planar Si transistor. You won't see that kind of improvement when comparing III-V to Si with equivalent electrostatics.
I don't doubt that III-V will give you better drive currents at low voltages than a Si transistor. The problem is that every chip needs some low leakage transistors, and I don't think the cost of second channel and gate stack module is worth it.
> There was a paper at VLSI 2012 that demonstrated at fixed 100nA/um Ioff, that planar InGaAs is about
> 50% better than silicon at 0.5V Vcc. That is with III-V QWFETs that have 1.6X higher Rext.
>
> They also had simulated results that looked even better, but those required QWFETs
> with comparable Rext and EOT as the silicon (which might be optimistic).
>
> The paper is III-V Field Effect Transistors for Future Ultra-Low Power
> Applications by G. Dewey, et al. if you want to look it up.
The comparison in that paper is completely unfair. They're comparing a thin body III-V device to a bulk planar Si transistor. You won't see that kind of improvement when comparing III-V to Si with equivalent electrostatics.
I don't doubt that III-V will give you better drive currents at low voltages than a Si transistor. The problem is that every chip needs some low leakage transistors, and I don't think the cost of second channel and gate stack module is worth it.
