SOI technology for the GHz era

TLDR

SOI CMOS delivers 20–35 % performance gains over bulk CMOS, has powered high‑performance microprocessors since 1998, and is expanding to lower‑end processors, SRAMs, and system‑on‑chip designs as technology scales to 0.13‑µm and beyond. The paper explains why SOI improves performance and its scalability to the 0.1‑µm generation and beyond, after reviewing IBM’s SOI history. Recent SOI applications include high‑end microprocessors, low‑power RF CMOS, embedded DRAM, and vertical SiGe bipolar devices integrated on SOI.

Abstract

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS offers a 20–35% performance gain over bulk CMOS. High-performance microprocessors using SOI CMOS have been commercially available since 1998. As the technology moves to the 0.13-µm generation, SOI is being used by more companies, and its application is spreading to lower-end microprocessors and SRAMs. In this paper, after giving a short history of SOI in IBM, we describe the reasons for performance improvement with SOI, and its scalability to the 0.1-µm generation and beyond. Some of the recent applications of SOI in high-end microprocessors and its upcoming uses in low-power, radio-frequency (rf) CMOS, embedded DRAM (EDRAM), and the integration of vertical SiGe bipolar devices on SOI are described. As we move to the 0.1-µm generation and beyond, SOI is expected to be the technology of choice for system-on-a-chip applications which require high-performance CMOS, low-power, embedded memory, and bipolar devices.