Intel and SOI

[IntelUser2000]

Myth about Intel and SOI/leakage
1. SOI makes AMD's transistors faster than Intel's, and increases its lead further with Dual Stress Liner
2. Intel has more leakage current than AMD because AMD has SOI
3. Intel will NOT have Fully Depleted SOI in 2007 with 45nm Tri-Gate transistors

1. No, no and no. Look at AMDs transistor speed here: http://translate.google.com/translate?h...%3DIBM%2B65nm%2BNMOS%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D

With 90nm and SOI+DSL, at 100nA leakage current(called Ioff), transistor Idsat values are(which is responsible for transistor switching speeds:

at 1.0V Vdd,
NMOS: 0.94mA
PMOS: 0.535mA

Intel's transistor numbers:
Intel's on the other hand, with their 90nm and SS, at same 100nA leakage, the transistor Idsat values are:

at 1.0V Vdd,
NMOS: 1.01mA
PMOS: 0.55mA

Turning out to be: around 2-10% faster than AMD's SOI+DSL process AT SAME LEAKAGE CURRENT!!! So before DSL was available, Intel was having transistor speed lead of 30-40%!!!(AMD claims 24% increase using DSL).

Now that makes it look even worse for Prescott, but, also keep in mind that CPUs are designed to be optimized at CERTAIN process generation, meaning Pentium 4 was probably never meant to be at 90nm, we can see that it was best at 0.13u. But we can see Intel went with 90nm Pentium 4's anyway, since there was no alternative at that time, leading them to increase pipeline stages to increase clock speed, which led to vast increase in logic transistors to cancel out the effect of the longer pipeline.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Ah, damn me, I didn't finish explaining. Off to #2

2. Because at same leakage Intel's transistor's are fastest(in the industry), it means they can have lower leakage at same speeds as other process technology from other companies(actually much lower).

3. Intel WILL have FD-SOI in 2007 with Tri-Gate, since design rule of the Tri-Gate transistors make them have FD-SOI. They don't call it FD-SOI though. Intel calls it Tri-Gate Depleted Substrate Transistors. HMM, I wonder why? Because it is depleted? Doesn't that sound similar to... FD-SOI???