Feb. 20, 2008 – The SOI Consortium, formed last fall to expand and accelerate usage of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) has added another big-name member: Applied Materials, joining nearly two dozen other firms to tout the technology’s performance and power consumption benefits to a wider audience of end users.

“Applied Materials is a longtime supplier of equipment, manufacturing technology solutions and R&D resources to the SOI industry,” said Andre-Jacques Auberton-Herve, chairman of the SOI Industry Consortium (and top exec at SOI supplier Soitec), in a statement. “Applied Materials’ entry into the SOI Consortium supports the momentum we are gaining across the entire spectrum of the semiconductor market.

Founding members of the SOI Industry Consortium include: AMD, ARM, Cadence Design Systems, CEA-Leti, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Innovative Silicon, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, NXP, Samsung, Semico, Soitec, SEH Europe, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, TSMC, and UMC. Though at the time of the consortium’s launch, Auberton-Herve suggested membership could expand to 60 members from “all components of the ecosystem.”