Silicon on Insulator Penetrates Apple/Intel/IBM

Soitec CEO: Cusp of exponential growth

R. Colin Johnson, Technology Editor, EE Times, Oct. 07, 2015 – 

In a exclusive interview, Soitec's CEO and board chairman reveals that the Apple iPhone 6s has multiple RF chips built on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates and even long-time rejector of SOI--Intel--and IBM are using SOI for their silicon photonics push.

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) has had a long rocky road to success, but it appears to be on track to major market penetration-so much so that senior vice president and general manager Rutger Wijburg of GlobalFoundries bet me a bottle of wine that fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) would be outselling FinFETs within four years.

And no wonder, since Wijburg announced details here at the SEMICON Europa 2015 (Oct.6-8) of GlobalFoundries' 22-nanometer "22FDX" SOI platform, which it claims delivers FinFET-like performance but at a much lower power point and at a cost comparable to 28-nanometer planar technologies. The 300-millimeter $250 million FD-SOI foundry here in the "Silicon Saxony" area of Germany, builds on 20 years of GlobalFoundries' investments in Europe's largest semiconductor fabs.

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