Silicon on Insulator Penetrates Apple/Intel/IBM

Soitec CEO: Cusp of exponential growth

R. Colin Johnson, Technology Editor, EE Times
10/7/2015 08:45 PM EDT

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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