As China counts on Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (FD-SOI) technology as a pillar central to its leapfrogging strategy, its FD-SOI ecosystem needs more application scenarios and increased participation from IC design companies to take off, according to Ye Tianchun, Secretary General of China IC Innovation Alliance, at the 8th Shanghai FD-SOI Forum. The forum, taking place between October 23-24, saw leading international and Chinese players of SOI technology among its participants, including VeriSilicon, GlobalFoundries, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys and NXP.
Kelvin Xu, Staff Product Marketing Manager of Synopsys, noted that the EDA leader already have the IP ecosystem and EDA tools ready for FD-SOI. adding that the company also offers more than 50 IPs for GT22FDX - GlobalFoundries' proprietary FD-SOI technology platform geared to connected and low-power embedded applications. Notably, according to Xu, Synopsys and GF are collaborating closely to address automotive design requirements on GT22FDX. Apart from GF, Synopsys also offers IPs for Samsung's 28nm-based FD-SOI platform.
Handel Jones, CEO of IBS, pointed out at the forum that while 28nm and 22nm FD-SOI are already in high-volume production, 18nm FD-SOI technology is being developed, and may have extensive adoption in the Chinese market. He also noted that FD-SOI technology is already capable of supporting a wide range of applications, including wearable devices, millimeter transceivers in smartphones and automotive and general-purpose MCUs built on 28nm and 22nm nodes. However, high-volume wafer fab capacity is key requirement - an observation shared by Ye, who noted that the lack of FD-SOI capacity worldwide is also a major issue.
According to SEMI's forecast of SOI wafer production, as presented by SEMI China President Lung Chiu, a total of 3152,000 SOI wafers were produced worldwide in 2022, with the majority of them used for smartphone application (66%). The second largest application came from the automotive sector, accounting for 23%. By 2027, SEMI estimates that a total of 4501,000 SOI wafers will be produced, with 60% of coming from smartphone applications, 20% from automotives, and 16% from wearables.
VeriSilicon, a major player in China's RISC-V ecosystem and also the country's largest chip design IP vendor, is a co-organizer of the event. In July, the company indicated that it had already successfully tapped out chips on 28nm and 22nm FD-SOI platforms, alongside its FinFET platforms on 14nm/10nm/7nm/5nm. Wayne Dai, VeriSilicon founder and CEO, sees FD-SOI, RISC-V and Chiplet to be the three technologies underpinning China's ambition to leapfrog in semiconductor development.
Back in 2017, GlobalFoundries planned to invest US$10 billion on a 12-inch fab in Chengdu, transferring its 22nm FDX FD-SOI technology from Dresden to China. Before the plan was derailed and cancelled in 2019, GF originally aimed to set up a FD-SOI ecosystem based in Chengdu, targeting an annual capacity of 1 million wafers.
