STMicroelectronics NV announced update in its testing of its 28nm FD-SOI Technology Platform. The company announced that application-processor engine devices manufactured at the company's Crolles, France fab, were capable of operating at 3GHz with even greater power efficiency at a given operating frequency than alternate technologies. Reinforcing the point of simplicity, the company has found porting Libraries and Physical IPs from 28nm Bulk CMOS to 28nm FD-SOI to be straightforward, and the process of designing digital SoCs with conventional CAD tools and methods in FD-SOI to be identical to Bulk, due to the absence of MOS-history-effect.

FD-SOI enables production of highly energy-efficient devices, with the dynamic body-bias allowing instant switch to high-performance mode when needed and return to a very-low-leakage state for the rest of the time --all in a totally transparent fashion for the application software, operating system, and the cache systems. Finally, FD-SOI can operate at significant performance at low voltage with superior energy efficiency versus Bulk CMOS. The company will be demonstrating the FD-SOI technology at its booth (Hall 7 E110) at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Feb. 25-28.