Oct 14 2009
The SOI Industry Consortium today announced an initiative to deliver a silicon on insulator (SOI) educational event in conjunction with ARM TechCon3 to help the electronics industry reap the benefits of SOI. Responding to the industry's need for education in this area, the SOI Design Clinic will provide IC designers and engineering management with a technical understanding of significant differences between designing on SOI versus bulk silicon, and how to receive the power-saving, integration, reliability and performance advantages of SOI. Respected experts from the semiconductor industry will deliver training and share their insights at this practical and timely event, to help attendees evaluate and plan their move to SOI.
Shrinking semiconductor feature sizes demonstrate that CMOS on bulk silicon is rapidly reaching its technological limits for many applications. Process complexity, variability, short-channel effects, leakage, power density, and reliability are just a few reasons why technology leaders transition to SOI. Today available foundry processes, libraries, EDA tools and designer training are making SOI accessible to fabless semiconductor companies and OEMs, and enabling first-time SOI design teams to achieve improved power, performance and area results in their customary design cycle times, as documented by ARM in a recent study released today (http://www.arm.com/news/26070.html .)
The design clinic will take place in the Santa Clara Convention Center (California) on October 21, 2009, co-located with ARM TechCon3. Presented in two 3 hour sessions of live classroom instruction, from 9am to 12noon and from 2pm to 5pm, the program will include lunch, admission to the ARM TechCon3 keynote session and a post-clinic reception on the exhibition floor. The design clinic content will focus on:
- SOI fundamentals
- Current and emerging bulk CMOS design challenges and how SOI eliminates/mitigates them
- Lower power design techniques
- High performance microprocessor system design techniques
- PDKs, libraries, IP and EDA tool ecosystem for SOI design
- Standard cell/custom design flows and methodologies
- Projections for the future of SOI design
Posted on October 14th, 2009