Although SOI technology has been touted as superior over bulk technology for CMOS logic applications and introduced to the mainstream since the beginning of this decade, SOI CMOS has not gained widespread adoption and its markets are so far limited to niche segments such as high performance processors and military applications. One of the hurdles for the slow adoption is the high SOI substrate cost. Traditionally, SOI substrate cost about about 5-10X as compared to its bulk substrate. The cost of SOI substrate has been gradually lowering down over the years. Now, a 300 mm SOI wafer costs around $900, about three times the cost of a high-quality bulk CMOS wafer. While wafer cost is a fairly small part of the overall cost of a manufactured IC, SOI still adds a 10 to 15 percent overall cost compared to bulk CMOS. The other inhibiting barrier for the adoption of SOI is the rather limited IP and library available for SOI CMOS.

The situation for SOI could be getting better now. IBM has just announced that they would offer 45nm SOI foundry service. The service package includes design tools, IP and libraries (Ref). The package also incorporates ARM’s physical IP library including standard cell, memory and I/O libraries. IBM SOI foundry offering also provides the platform for its two partners, Chartered Semiconductor and “The Foundry Company” to offer SOI foundry service in the future as well.

On top of the IBM news, SOITEC, the world’s leading supplier of SOI wafers, officially opened its new wafer in Singapore last week. The new fab is located in the new Pasir Ris Wafer Fab Park (Ref). With increased volume of SOI substrate production, one expects the cost of SOI substrate will further reduce.

The above two announcements, SOI foundry and new SOI plant, will provide the impetus for SOI to gain traction in other market segments such as consumer space.

In the last one week, AMD has rolled out a slew of new products. First, it announced today the launch of 3D professional graphics accelerator card, ATI FireGL™ V7700. The new GPU card is capable of creating photorealistic visualizations of real-world objects and environments on stereoscopic display. It is also the first commercially available 3D workstation card to support 3D on DisplayPort - the latest digital display interface standard by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) (Ref). Second, AMD announced last week the shipment of 65nm Phenom triple-core (X3) and quad-core (X4) processors for desktop PCs. When paired with AMD’s recently unveiled 780 series chipset, both Phenom X3 and X4 processors will deliver significant enhancements in gaming and high-definition experiences for mainstream PC customers, including full HD support for VC-1, MPEG-2 and H.264 formats (Ref). On the other hand, the AMD’s Phenom X4 9100e quad-core processors are the world’s first and most energy efficient 65W desktop quad-core processor. Lastly, AMD also announced last week the immediate availability of four new high-performance AMD Phenom™ X4 processors for the high-performance HD gaming and video users. The Phenom quad-core processor products include 9850 (2.5G, 125W), 9750 (2.4G, 125W), 9750 (2.4G, 95W), 9650 (2.3G, 95W), 9550 (2.2G, 95W), 9100e (1.8G, 65W). The Phenom triple-core processor products include 8600 (2.3G, 95W) and 8400 (2.1G, 95W).

Earlier in the month, AMD has also demonstrated its first 45nm native quad-core processors (see picture) at CeBIT in Germany. It looks like AMD is all set to fight with Intel head-on.