Think of silicon on insulator (SOI) as adult diapers for semiconductors.
The techology – a layer of material inserted into chips – wraps around transistors to prevent power from leaking out. The smaller transistors become, the bigger issue leakage becomes. The technology debuted in the '90s – and was heavily promoted by IBM – as a way to improve performance, boost chip speed and reduce the waste heat that can cause computers to malfunction or even melt.
Now, the SOI Consortium wants data center owners and others to understand how SOI-enabled chips can reduce power.
"The transistor is essentially isolated on all three dimensions," said Horacio Mendez, executive director of the SOI Consortium. "IBM went for high performance when frequency and speed were everything."
The results, he notes, are promising. A 45-nanometer chip made on SOI-enabled silicon will consume 30 to 40 percent less power than a similar chip made on generic silicon, he said. (The nanometer numbers refer to the manufacturing process node. Suffice it to say that most advanced microprocessors are made on the 45 nano node today.)
ARM, the company behind the designs of most cell phone processors, found that it could reduce dynamic power by 22 percent and increase operating frequency by 5 percent. Not bad.
Over the years, SOI has also become more pervasive. Initially, IBM was the only big consumer of SOI. Then came Freescale (which used to be known as Motorola Semiconductor.) Advanced Micro Devices uses SOI on its chips. Other members of the SOI consortium include TSMC and UMC, the big chip foundries.
The holdout is Intel. Intel has often downplayed and criticized SOI. However, Intel continues to publish papers on SOI at academic conferences, so you never know.
The cost of adding SOI also continues to drop. When chips are made on the 32 nanometer node, SOI chips will be close in cost, said Mendez. The first 32-nano chips will likely come out later this year. When chips start coming out on 22 nanometers a few years later, SOI could be cheaper.
"The complex techniques they are doing to keep power from going crazy (in ordinary silicon) is adding cost at a rapid rate," Mendez said.
So we shall see, but it's something for you green IT types to keep an eye on.
