24 July 2009
SOI to save energy?
Manufacturing semiconductors using silicon on insulator (SOI) technology, rather than the traditional bulk silicon approach could bring energy savings of at least 30% when comparing designs with the same feature size and performance, according to the SOI Industry Consortium.
"SOI is simply greener," said Horacio Mendez, the Consortium's executive director. "The first high volume SOI applications were geared to high performance, but even there, the power saving benefits are now apparent. The fact that 18 of the top 20 most power efficient supercomputers are built with SOI demonstrates its 'GreenIT' benefits for enterprise applications."
Mendez added that current versions of the top three consumer game consoles each include SOI based chips, but claimed more could be done to help consumers lower their power bills through broader SOI usage. "The Consortium's 'green' campaign will drive that point home to the design community," he continued.
Consortium member ARM has performed a benchmark using a 24 stage interconnect loaded datapath circuit. The device was created using IBM's 45nm bulk silicon process and on its 45nm SOI technology. According to ARM, the SOI approach saw 25% smaller circuit area, 66% lower static power leakage and a 22% reduction in dynamic power. Performance was also said to be boosted by 5%.
Author
Chris Shaw
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.soiconsortium.org
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