Singapore Institute of Microelectronics (IME) and Japanese Unisantis-Electronics have jointly announced a collaborative research agreement to develop next generation three-dimensional surrounding-gate transistor (SGT). The development will be mainly carried out in Singapore, using state of the art semiconductor facilities in IME (Ref). I did a little googling on SGT and I was surprise to find that the idea of SGT was proposed by Fujio Masuoka’s team 20 years ago (Ref). The idea was never commercialized because it was too far ahead of its time and there was still plenty of room for conventional planar 2D transistor to scale down back then. However, the conventional planar transistor architecture will be soon running out of steam in the next decade as it hits the physical limitations. Therefore, in my opinion, 3D transistor or quasi-3D transistor architectures will be likely to commercialize in the next decade.

The IME-Unisantis SGT project is led none other by the originator of SGT and Unisantis’ Chief Technology Officer Fujio Masuoka. Fujio Masuoka is most famous and remembered for his revolutionary invention of Flash memory in 1980s when he was still working in Toshiba. However, Toshiba did not appreciate the value of his invention and even tried repeatedly to move him to a position where he could do no further research. It was Intel that first commercialized Masuoka’s invention and became the world leader in NOR flash memory (Ref). Toshiba finally conceded and Masuoka left Toshiba in 1994. In 2004, Fujio Masuoka even sued Toshiba for what he considered his rightful cut of its profits on flash. The lawsuit was finally settled out of court after Toshiba agreed to pay 87 million yen to Fujio Masuoka (Ref).

Good news, you can now make free international calls via mobile phone. Skype has moved from the PC arena to mobile arena. Partnering with 3, a mobile media company, it has launched the long-rumoured Skype mobile phone on the 2nd Nov in UK. The new phone, officially labeled as 3 Skypephone, enables users to make free Skype to Skype calls, as well as send free Skype instant messages via the VoIP service. The 3 Skypephone will be available this year in the UK, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau and Sweden.

What is relatively unknown to most people is that the 3 Skypephone is powered by the Qualcomm’s BREW technology. Qualcomm’s BREW platform is a powerful technology that not only integrates Skype with all other aspects of a mobile phone, it also allow developers to develop innovative applications and services on the mobile phone such as 3D games.

The following video is an introduction to 3 Skypephone.