Re: ""We've done some early work on the Spice models so that Sun engineers could evaluate the technology, and together we've come to the conclusion that the advantages of SOI get smaller and smaller as you shrink [geometries]," Buss said. "
This is the EXACT SAME conclusion that Intel reached - and published - about TWO YEARS AGO !!!
eetimes.com
"IBM's view on SOI is not shared by all. Mark T. Bohr, director of process architecture and integration at Intel Corp. and an Intel fellow, said Intel has concluded that any performance gains derived from SOI will diminish with every process generation, and that the downsides are too numerous.
In a slide presentation, Bohr showed figures indicating that extra performance derived from junction capacitance — the most compelling reason to choose SOI, he said — will start with a 13 percent improvement at 0.25 micron, fall to 10 percent at 0.18 micron and then to 8 percent at 0.13 micron. Other positive aspects were marginal and offset by negative factors, such as the floating-body effects caused by the transistor being isolated from the silicon.
He concluded by saying SOI provides less than a half-generation performance gain, has too many circuit-design uncertainties, adds another 10 percent to the process cost for an extra mask step, requires pricier wafers and may lead to yield loss.
"It's still unproven for high-performance CPU applications," he said. "We see most of the SOI benefits holding constant, but the one key benefit is going to diminish."
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