FD-SOI Rises to the Challenge

In recent days, we have seen the world’s two largest chip manufacturers announce new low-power 22nm process technologies. We are pleased to see other manufacturers following our technology solution lead. Almost two years ago, we launched our 22FDX technology for wireless, battery-powered intelligent systems.

While others have been focused only on squeezing more digital performance out of the bleeding edge, we at GF have been focusing on system-level metrics with 22FDX. The 22nm node is now becoming one of the biggest battlegrounds in semiconductors, which demonstrates the unprecedented innovation that is taking place at advanced nodes that are one or two steps off of the leading edge.

We chose FD-SOI over bulk planar or FinFET because it offers the best combination of performance, power and area for these applications. 22FDX is unmatched by any competing 22nm technology in several areas:

• The lowest operating voltage (0.4 volt)
• The most cost-effective CPP and MX scaling
• The lowest mask count
• The best RF performance
• The only technology to offer software-controlled transistor body-biasing

And while others are announcing their offerings now, 22FDX is fully qualified for production at our Fab 1 facility in Dresden, Germany. We are seeing strong customer demand, with more than 50 active engagements in high-growth areas such as mobile, IoT, and automotive.

Not only are we delivering 22FDX now, but we are investing for the future. In September of last year, we introduced an extension to our FDX roadmap with our next generation, the 12FDX platform, which is the only technology to provide the design flexibility and cost of a planar process down to 12nm, and yet offer 10nm FinFET-level performance. We expect others to follow our 12FDX lead!

We are also making significant capacity investments. In Germany, we are building up 22FDX capacity, with plans to grow the overall fab capacity by 40 percent by 2020. And in China, we recently announced a partnership to build a 300mm fab in Chengdu to support the growth of the Chinese semiconductor market and to meet accelerating global customer demand for 22FDX.

Last but not least, a robust design and IP ecosystem is coalescing around FDX. We recently launched our FDXcelerator™ Partner Program, which is designed to reduce time-to-market for customers and facilitate faster migration to FD-SOI from bulk nodes such as 40nm and 28nm. More than 20 partners have joined the ecosystem since its launch only six months ago.

Clearly excitement about FDX is rising and the competition is heating up. FD-SOI has long been considered the “technology of the future,” but now all of the puzzle pieces are coming together to make the promise of FD-SOI a reality TODAY.