STMicroelectronics announced that GLOBALFOUNDRIES has agreed to manufacture devices for ST using ST’s proprietary Fully Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (FD-SOI) technology in both the 28nm and 20nm nodes. Fully depleted transistors are capable of combining high peak performance with low active power across all use cases (retaining good performance at reduced power supply), and with low stand-by power.

ST also has FD-SOI internal manufacturing capacity in Crolles, France. The 28nm FD-SOI generation, currently in the industrialization phase, is scheduled to be available for prototyping by July 2012 and the next node, the 20nm FD-SOI generation, is currently under development and is scheduled to be ready for prototyping by Q3 2013.

ST FD-SOI technology has already been selected by ST-Ericsson for its use in future mobile platforms, which will enable enhanced performance from the ST-Ericsson NovaThor™ platform with much less battery usage – as much as 35 percent lower power consumption at maximum performance.

ST plans to open access to its FD-SOI technology to GLOBALFOUNDRIES’s other customers, giving them the possibility to develop products with the most advanced technology available at both the 28nm and 20nm nodes.

Joel Hartmann, STMicroelectronics Corporate VP, Front End Manufacturing and Process R&D, Digital Sector, said: “FD-SOI is ideally suited for wireless and tablet applications, where it provides fully-depleted transistor benefits using conventional planar technology, and this arrangement with GLOBALFOUNDRIES ensures our customers will have a secure source of supply.”

Building upon Hartmann’s statement, Philippe Magarshack Corporate VP, Design Enablement and Services, added, “Porting Libraries and Physical IPs from 28nm Bulk CMOS to 28nm FD-SOI is straightforward, and designing digital SoCs with conventional CAD tools and methods in FD-SOI is identical to Bulk, due to the absence of MOS-history-effect. In addition, FD-SOI can be used for either extreme performance or very low leakage on the same silicon, by biasing dynamically the substrate of the circuit. Finally, FD-SOI can operate at significant performance at low voltage with superior energy efficiency versus Bulk CMOS.”