FD-SOI stands for fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator. The term
FD-SOI typically refers to a planar transistor architecture.
Planar architectures are pretty much what the industry's been
doing for decades, but with FD-SOI, it's done on an SOI wafer
with very thin top silicon over a very thin layer of insulating
Buried Oxide (aka BOX). This confers significant advantages in
terms of power, performance and area at an extremely competitive
final cost. The current thinking is that FD-SOI will bridge the
gap starting at the 28nm node and running through around the
14nm node (maybe beyond), when FinFETs are ready. (FinFETs are
fully-depleted transistors, too, but they have a vertical
orientation, hence the “3D” or “vertical” moniker. They can be
built on bulk or SOI wafers, too, but that's for another wiki.)
Contents The Basics Brief History Design Perspectives Foundries
/ Wafers Resources (The illustrations above were taken from A
Primer on FD-SOI by the SOI Industry Consortium.) Brief History
Although a somewhat