Industry Leaders Launch SOI Consortium

Nineteen electronics companies joined together to launch the SOI Industry Consortium, an attempt to bring silicon-on-insulator (SOI) innovation to broad markets. AMD, ARM, Cadence Design Systems, CEA-Léti,Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Innovative Silicon, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, NXP, Samsung, Semico, Soitec, SEH Europe, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, TSMC and UMC are founding members. SOI provides a solution to performance and power concerns, though most companies incorporated the technology independently. The Consortium aims to make available a variety of SOI design platforms and IP to promote cost-effective manufacturing solutions. "Riding the performance wave, SOI has made significant inroads," André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, chair of the consortium, said in a statement. "Now, the focus has expanded to reducingpower consumption." Auberton-Hervé said SOI can cut power consumption significantly in applications from running a data center to powering a cell phone. "By unifying users and enablers, the SOI Industry Consortium can identify and close gaps in the design chain, making SOI a viable choice for designers over a much broader range of markets," he added. "SOI benefits are now being recognized by most of the major players in the industry and the technology is on the verge of entering the mainstream," Bryan Lewis, vice president of semiconductor research at Gartner, said in a statement. "Companies from the entire semiconductor food chain are investing time and money to take SOI to the next level and this should clearly accelerate improvements inreduced power consumption and improved performance for a wide range of devices andapplications."