ARM 1176 in IBM SOI process demonstrates a cell-based flow

By _EDN Practical Chip Design

October 12, 2009

For several years it has been clear that SoI processes have a more favorable speed vs. voltage characteristic than comparable-node bulk silicon processes. This advantage can mean either lower operating voltage at a given speed---and thus lower power—or higher performance at a given voltage. And the presence of vast quantities of both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation-3 should eliminate any question about volume manufacture, at least from IBM. So why is SoI still so rarely used?

The normal answer is the lack of design infrastructure. Early on, most SoI designs were at the high-performance fringe, and so people rightly associated SoI with custom design and highly-skilled teams. It would require new device models, new libraries, and new tools to make SoI work in a normal cell-based RTL flow, this reasoning said.

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