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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: kash johal who wrote (90727)1/31/2000 9:26:00 PM
From: Saturn V  Read Replies (2) of 1575882
 
Ref- < I recall all the SOS BS from HP many years ago.
Maybe SOI isn't that new!!!! >

You are right that SOI is pretty old. And it used to be called SOS.[ Silicon on Sapphire].It even predates the work at HP. It began at RCA Labs in late 1960's. RCA would not pursue it, so several people left RCA and formed a company to pursue it. After several years and tons of money, this company went belly up. [ The name of the company escapes me now ]. This company never solved the yield problems with SOS.

Then HP labs spent several years pursuing it, and after pouring tons of money gave-up on it in early 1980's.

So Intel picked up the mantle, but within 2 years dumped the technology too.

Now IBM has taken on the challenge. IBM has the best technology, and it appears to have licked the problems which plagued everyone else. However the IBM results disclosed at IEDM 99, did not show a dramatic performance improvement over the Intel Coppermine process.

And IBM does not always have the most cost effective chip technology. For mainframes, the chip cost is not an issue. The last bit of performance means a lot. So IBM and Intel have a different outlook since they serve different market needs. Same goes for Copper interconnects too.

Given the sorry history of SOI, the old moniker SOS ( Save our Souls) was more appropriate.

Regards
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