IBM Ready to Manufacture 45nm SOI Chips

On Monday, IBM announced that it was ready to start manufacturing processors under the 45nm silicon-on-insulator fabrication technology. The Big Blue developed the technology in partnership with AMD, which was said to start the shipments of its new 45nm SOI central processing unit within the following days.

 

“45nm is our 6th generation of SOI technology and is a key driver in many collaborative designs with clients, including networking, storage, gaming, and other consumer applications,” said Mark Ireleand, vice president of IBM's semiconductor platforms, as reported by the InformationWeek website.

 

IBM announced that the new microprocessors under the 45nm SOI manufacturing technology were able to increase the level of performance up to 30 percent, while they also required 40 percent less power than the traditional technology, known as bulk complementary metal-oxide, or bulk CMOS. Intel is currently using this technology in the fabrication of its CPUs.

 

On the downside, the SOI technology offers a lot of advantages, and is much more expensive if compared with bulk process technologies. This results in the fact that only a small number of companies are using SOI in the manufacturing of their chips. Advanced Micro Devices is one of these companies, which is known to have been using different SOI procedures to manufacture its central processing units for the past five years.

 

SOI is also used by IBM in its chip fabrication process. The SOI technology hasn't been adopted by the mass market of semiconductors until now. To be able to provide new class of SOI designs, IBM will offer a 45nm foundry service, within its own fabs. The Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing will function as some sort of a “second source” foundry for IBM’s 45nm SOI offering. Big Blue has not disclosed yet any information regarding customers interested in the new 45nm SOI line.

 

Also on Monday, ARM Holdings announced a physical, intellectual-property library offering for the 45nm SOI technology.