AMD plans SOI mobile thrust

Advanced Micro Devices is concentrating on new process technologies including silicon on insulator (SOI) in an effort to produce a chip for the thin, light notebook market that breaks the GHz barrier. SOI technology, dismissed by Intel Corp., is expected to help lower power demands and therefore thermal output, an increasingly important issue is portables.

AMD will convert to the smaller 0.13-micron technology later this year, which will reduce both power and heat, but it will also use SOI in the next-generation Athlon-based Thoroughbred family. An AMD spokesman said of the Thoroughbred, "It's certainly in our technology planning, but we haven't put it on the public roadmap. SOI allows you to drive to higher frequencies and potentially lower power consumption due to reduced parasitic capacitance on the substrates."

The 0.13-micron Thoroughbred is expected early 2002. A mobile Athlon processor based on the Palomino core is anticipated this quarter.

Read the source article at eetimes.com.