December 12, 2012, Seoul - STMicroelectronics (ST), a leading semiconductor company providing a wide range of electronic applications, announced the completion of production readiness preparation for 28nm FD-SOI technology platform at its 300mm manufacturing facility in Crolles, France. This reaffirms ST's capability in providing fully depleted planar technology from the 28nm technology node. This technology is essential for embedded processors for multimedia and portable applications where achieving industry-leading performance and lowest power consumption while extending battery life and delivering superior graphics, multimedia, and high-speed broadband connectivity is critical. This was announced alongside the Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FD-SOI) Workshop held by the FD-SOI Consortium in San Francisco.

The FD-SOI technology platform includes a silicon-verified design platform with complete performance and foundation libraries (standard cells, memory generators, I/O, AMS IP, and high-speed interfaces) along with design flow ideally suited for developing fast and energy-efficient devices.

ST's FD-SOI technology has already been adopted by ST-Ericsson for developing next-generation mobile platforms, and through this, significant benefits in performance improvement including notably reduced power consumption compared to conventional technology utilization can be achieved.

Jean-Marc Chery, Senior Vice President of STMicroelectronics and Executive Vice President of the Digital Division and Chief Technology and Manufacturing Officer, stated, "ST has a long history of pioneering new solutions in products and technology. By bringing FD-SOI technology into the manufacturing phase, we have once again confirmed our position as a leader in semiconductor technology development and manufacturing innovation. Through post-processing wafer testing, we have demonstrated that FD-SOI is superior in performance and power compared to conventional technology, and through this, cost-effective industrial solutions can now be implemented from the 28nm node onwards. Measurements of ST-Ericsson's Novator ModAp platform multi-core subsystem show maximum frequency exceeding 2.5GHz and operation at 800MHz at 0.6V, fully satisfying expectations, and we have confirmed technology flexibility, expanded voltage range through DVFS (dynamic voltage and frequency scaling), and other advantages."

Equally important as manufacturing success is the fact that ST has developed porting libraries and physical IP enabling direct transition from 28nm bulk CMOS to 28nm FD-SOI, and due to the absence of MOS-history effect, the digital SoC design process using conventional CAD tools and methodologies is identical to bulk CMOS. FD-SOI enables production of highly energy-efficient devices. That is, when needed, dynamic body-bias can be utilized to immediately switch to high-performance mode, while maintaining a low-leakage state during the remainder of the time. All of this is accomplished in a completely transparent manner to application software, operating systems (OS), and cache systems. Finally, FD-SOI delivers superior performance with lower voltage and better energy efficiency compared to bulk CMOS.