10 October 2007

ARM In Group to Speed Up Silicon-On-Insulator Innovation

ARM is one of nineteen electronics companies who have joined forces to form the SOI (Silicon-On-Insulator) consortium, aimed at accelerating SOI innovation into broad markets by promoting the benefits of the technology and reducing the barriers to adoption.

“As a leader in processors and physical IP, ARM has always focused on providing the industry with the most power-efficient products. We believe SOI advances the industry in providing low-power applications, and ARM's involvement in the SOI Industry Consortium will help our customers accelerate their utilization,” commented Tom Lantzsch, Vice President of Marketing, ARM Physical IP.

Performance and power consumption are key concerns in the electronics industry. Early adopters have convincingly demonstrated that SOI is a powerful solution in addressing these concerns, but they are still very much banging their own drum. The next wave of adopters needs a proven and complete array of readily-accessible SOI design platforms and IP to ensure transparent design platforms and cost-effective manufacturing, according to the SOI Consortium. The SOI Consortium is therefore looking to bridge this gap by reducing adoption costs, making SOI best practices available and facilitating design examples across the value chain.

Covering a spectrum of users, enablers, suppliers and manufacturers, the founding membership roster are made up of 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.

“Riding the performance wave, SOI has made significant inroads,” commented André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, the consortium’s newly elected chair. “Now, the focus has expanded to reducing power consumption. SOI can cut power consumption significantly – an enormous advantage – whether you’re running a data center or hoping you have enough battery left to see the end of the match on your mobile telephone. 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.”

“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,” explained Bryan Lewis, Semiconductor Research VP of Gartner. “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 in reduced power consumption and improved performance for a wide range of devices and applications.”

The Consortium’s initial focus is on sharing best practices already established by early adopters and facilitating new design proof points demonstrating SOI’s performance, power and area advantages. The Board of Directors will be elected later this month.