Two days ago, Samsung has announced the purchase from STMicroelectronics company licenses for 28-nm semiconductor substrates FD-SOI (fully depleted silicon on insulator). This plate with a fully depleted insulating layer under work crystals. An additional layer of highly dielectric minimizes leakage currents, and also allows to increase the operating currents of the transistors and improve productivity by making up to 30%. What is also interesting, both companies intend to present a unified design process, as happened in the case of cooperation Samsung and GlobalFoundries. In practice, this would mean that the same project (processor, SoC) without modification can be installed either at the factory STMicroelectronics in Europe and factories Samsung. Company STMicroelectronics has qualified its European production to release 28-nm semiconductor on FD-SOI-plates, but without a partner is unable to start mass production of these decisions.
Samsung currently produces 28-nm chips on conventional monolithic plates. Theoretically, the transition to FD-SOI substrate does not require a special replacement of production equipment and will provide an opportunity to produce the usual 28-nm designs without redesign of electronic circuits. In other words, developers can save on each project at least $ 50 million, and without any effort to get into the hands of semiconductors clearly better performance.
28-nm semiconductor on FD-SOI, Samsung plans to organize in early 2015. So that developers can at the same time get the finished product, the company has now started to distribute software tools to produce digital layouts. It does not fit with some asserting that the old 28-nm designs may be performed on FD-SOI without modification. Obviously, the potential ligament FD-SOI and 28-nm rules can be fully revealed only in the case of development projects from scratch. However, this can only refer to the most productive solutions with a maximum clock frequency, whereas reduction of leakage current may have already automatically available when the optional insulating layer. Analysts believe that this combination will be very useful when issuing decisions for wearable electronics, for which energy efficient modes more important than performance. Related Products :
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