Strained Silicon Technology Holds a Promising Future for Ultra High-speed Computing Devices

Business Wire, April 3, 2008

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Strained silicon technology holds a promising future in the semiconductor industry in serving the needs of the next generation high-speed computing devices. Industrial efforts in the space expect to reap long-term benefits as it opens up an entirely new domain in the demanding and competent semiconductor industry.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.technicalinsights.frost.com), Global Advances in Strained Silicon Technology, finds that strained silicon technology will contribute effectively to the next generation computing devices for demanding applications such as supercomputers, game consoles and high speed memory devices.

"As the semiconductor industry approaches physical restrictions of geometric scaling, researchers are analyzing advanced and alternate technologies for improving the device performance," says Frost & Sullivan Technical Insights Research Analyst Krishnakumar Srinivasan.

"Reduction in transistor size enables enhancement of device and system speed, but beyond a particular limit, it affects the mobility of the channel disrupting the functioning of the device as a whole," adds Technical Insights Research Analyst Kasthuri Jagadeesan.

Strained Silicon technology has evolved to efficiently resolve this issue in the industrial space. By increasing the electron mobility rate, it is feasible to achieve higher transistor switching speeds. Higher switching speeds refer to higher frequencies and this in return, leads to fast computing. Furthermore, strained silicon technology enables enhancement of transistor performance without transistor scaling.

"It is feasible to produce high computing speed devices using strained technology, without actually going in for transistor scaling," notes Srinivasan. "High transistor switching speed complemented by enhanced performance are the primary driving factors of strained silicon technology."

However, the lack of this standard remains one of most critical aspect that needs resolution in the near future to carry forward the potential of strained silicon technologies into the industry. Industry efforts strive to develop efficient spectrometric mechanisms and systems that can track and control the applied strain. The adoption of all of these techniques and approaches will become possible only when their performance capabilities can be benchmarked against some standard.

"Beyond measurement of strain and maintaining uniformity of strain, the industry is confronted with reliability issues, material effects, device defects and process integration/design issues," says Jagadeesan. "Furthermore, other challenges related to related technologies such as silicon-on-insulator (SOI) have to be resolved at the earliest."

Developers of strained silicon technology need to work more collaboratively to shape efforts at a very early stage of technology evolution. It would be beneficial for such collaborative effort to look at industrial aspects at the basic and applied research phase itself thereby reducing the time and efforts in the product conceptualization and application development phases of technology evolution. The academia has already started focusing on niche aspects like design tool development and enhancing efficient manufacturing techniques. Further efforts in these directions will ensure the deployment of strained silicon technologies at the earliest.

Global Advances in Strained Silicon Technology, a part of the Technical Insights program, provides a technology overview and outlook for strained silicon technology. Furthermore, this research service includes detailed technology analysis and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.

If you are interested in an analysis, which provides manufacturers, end users, and other industry participants with an overview, summary, challenges, and latest coverage of, Global Advances in Strained Silicon Technology, send an e-mail to David Escalante, Corporate Communications, at descalante_ti@frost.com with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail address, company website, city, state and country. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by e-mail.

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