French Development Drives Mobile at Semicon
July 2012 – At Semicon San Francisco, CEA Leti and their spinoff SOITEC held events to overview their new research and new production capabilities. Both of these groups are focusing on new semiconductor technologies for the mobile marketplace as the drive. The differentiating factors for mobile include: reduced operating voltage, reduced standby and leakage current, high speed device operation, high density device construction, 3D device stacking and low cost device creation.
CEA Leti started the evening with presentations on their new 2xnm process development and the integration of optical interconnect into circuits where high performance is the driver. The 2xnm devices are being manufactured using direct write eBeam lithography in conjunction with standard double and quad patterning. At this time, they did not find that the EUV systems had enough throughput or maturity on the resists to use for pre-production levels. These advanced processes are being created to operate a low power supply voltages while delivering the same performance. When built on SOI wafers, as with the SOITEC process, the devices can operate at 1.0v with the same performance as a traditional 2D device operating at 1.2V.
These devices are not just low power they are being ceated to support being stacked n multiple technology end products Cell phones and mobile devices do not have the space and to allow every die to be separate, so we are moved to mounting electronic subsystems that had die of multi-function stacked ontorp of each other to produce a result. These designs mix, memory, logic, and analog/sensors into one single pakaged part, but support three independent fabrication processes for the designs.
They have design tools and design methods to address these TSV (Through Silicon Vias) for stacked die, and have been working wih the technology for well over a decade. Their R&D results show a very aggressive connection pitch which would allow for high bandwidth memories to be used in mobile devices.
SOITEC discussed thier new Fully Depleted device offering on an SOI substrate. As previously, reported in detail in June, these processes have now been fully integrated into their supply chain and is available for production for long battery life mobile devices. This is especially important for implementing graphics core IP which have the greatest percentage of idle time, and hence leakage current, in a mobile device as well as having the most aggressive performance requirements.
Both CEA Leti and SOITEC introduced their technology though very well done press and customer exposure events rather than just a session at the conference. This allowed for 1:1 discussion with the technologist to go over the details of the technology releases, rather than just leaving things aa marketing presentation.
Both groups have now integrated discussion and methods of tests into their flow as a critical part of the production and design environment.
