ST hits ‘major milestone’ with FD-SOI tests
1 min read
STMicroelectronics says it has hit a major milestone in the testing of its 28nm fully depleted silicon on insulator (FD-SOI) technology platform.
Following its announcement in December 2012 of the successful manufacturing of SoCs using the technology, ST has now produced application processor engines capable of operating at 3GHz. It says the engines feature greater power efficiency at a given operating frequency than alternate technologies.
"As we had anticipated, FD-SOI is proving to be fast, simple and cool; we had fully expected to see 3GHz operating speeds, the design approach is very consistent with what we had been doing in bulk cmos and, with the benefits of fully depleted channels and back biasing, the low power requirements are also meeting our expectations," said Jean-Marc Chery, ST's chief technology and manufacturing officer.
According to ST, FD-SOI technology is a major breakthrough in the pursuit of Moore's Law and hitting the 3GHz operating speed will lead to the technology being adopted in portable equipment, digital still cameras, gaming and asics.
