SOI technology for the GHz era

Abstract

Silicon on Insulator (SOI) CMOS offers 20-35% performance gain over bulk CMOS. High performance microprocessors using SOI CMOS have been shipping since 1998. As we move to 0.13 /spl mu/m generation, it will be used by more companies, and spread to lower-end microprocessors and SRAMs. In this paper, after a short history of SOI in IBM, we will describe causes of performance gain on SOI, and its scalability to 0.1 /spl mu/m generation and beyond. Some of the recent applications of SOI in high-end microprocessors will be described. It is fully expected that as we move to 0.1 /spl mu/m and beyond, SOI is the technology of choice for applications which require high performance, and/or low power.