FDSOI Driving ST's Automotive Biz

Peter Clarke, EETimes
5/27/2016 01:01 PM EDT

LONDON—The fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) chip manufacturing process championed by STMicroelectronics has become almost the default choice for digital manufacturing within the automotive and discrete group (ADG) business unit at ST, according that group's senior executive.

And that emphasis on FDSOI will continue through the manufacture of automotive microcontrollers in 28nm FDSOI, said Marco Monti executive vice president responsible for the ADG business unit.

Monti said that while ST's most advanced microcontrollers are on 40nm CMOS the next generation will be on 28nm FDSOI with some sort of non-volatile memory possibly based on phase-change memory. "The use of FDSOI in MCUs at ST is driven by automotive," said Monti. Rival European chip company and automotive supplier NXP Semiconductors is also expected to develop MCUs based on 28nm FDSOI (

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