Cell Process (from Chipworks)

[Dave Baumann]

This might be of interest to some. From an email to me from Chipworks:

There's also a fair degree of press comment about the new Cell chip, with IBM involved as well this time. In the press release last week at ISSCC they claim that the chip is prototyped in 90-nm SOI technology, so presumably out of IBM at East Fishkill, although Sony also seem to be ramping up a SOI process in their Nagasaki fab. Even though it's 90-nm, this will be a different process from the EE+GS chip, more similar to the IBM process used for the Apple G5 processor. By using SOI, and probably strained Si too, they will have performance advantages over the bulk silicon 90-nm process they used for the EE+GS chip. So not as much pressure to get the 65-nm process actually into manufacturing, though that is bound to come along in due course.

 

[Spidermate]

This might be of interest to some. From an email to me from Chipworks:

There's also a fair degree of press comment about the new Cell chip, with IBM involved as well this time. In the press release last week at ISSCC they claim that the chip is prototyped in 90-nm SOI technology, so presumably out of IBM at East Fishkill, although Sony also seem to be ramping up a SOI process in their Nagasaki fab. Even though it's 90-nm, this will be a different process from the EE+GS chip, more similar to the IBM process used for the Apple G5 processor. By using SOI, and probably strained Si too, they will have performance advantages over the bulk silicon 90-nm process they used for the EE+GS chip. So not as much pressure to get the 65-nm process actually into manufacturing, though that is bound to come along in due course.

I don't know who would have thought it was related to the EE anyway. This was mentioned back in 2003.