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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice H. Norcott who wrote (33263)	6/15/1998 1:22:00 AM
From: Yousef	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573305

Maurice, Re: "Yousef, Could you comment on this technology that IBM is developing ?" I would be happy to give my opinion ... SOI has been around for many years with many different techniques (Silicon on Sapphire, Fully Depleted Silicon on Insulator and Implanted Oxygen SIMOX). There are a few advantages to using a Silicon On Insulator (SOI) process: 1) Devices are fabricated on a thin layer of silicon with the Source/Drain (S/D) doped so that the S/D reaches the insulator. This gives very low S/D capacitance which accounts for about one third of device/FET capacitance ... thus SOI devices "potentially" can be faster than normal CMOS devices. 2) Devices have very low or NO S/D leakage currents ... thus SOI processes have lower power than normal CMOS processes. 3) SOI devices also are less susceptible to radiation strikes causing electron/hole generation and recombination currents that could change the state of a dynamic or static node in a circuit. The "downside" is that SOI devices without a substrate bias are more difficult to control the device threshold voltage (Vt). The article states that IBM is buying machine number two and three, so IBM is increasing capacity of a proven process. I expect that IBM could be using this for some very specialized chips/designs and this technology won't be a direct competitor to Intel at .18um or .13um. These are my thoughts on the article. Make It So, Yousef