Panel: Emerging vs. established technologies, a two sphinxes' riddle at the crossroads?

Crossroads have always been challenging: they require a decision; in Egyptian and Greek mythology they were often guarded by two sphinxes trying to cheat the traveler with their riddles. The two sphinxes, the knight and the knave, the lady and the tiger, are just few instances of difficult puzzles that have kept logicians and mathematicians busy for the last 5,000 years. Today, you are walking down Moore's Law road when you come to a crossroads: one road brings you into the land of emerging technologies: 14, 10 and 7 nanometer, FDSOI, FinFET, 3D-IC,… beyond and below; the other road holds you into the land of established technologies: 28, 40, 65, and 90 nanometers, possibly even above, A&M/S, MEMS,... Choosing the right road is critical to lead your project and your company to success, but making the right decision is increasingly difficult, as it encompasses complex technical and economic considerations. However, unlike the mythological traveler, you won't run into the sphinxes but, rather, into some of our industry best experts; unlike the sphinxes, they will strive to provide you with honest advice about the " road conditions " , and you are allowed to ask multiple questions to them to figure out which road is the best for you. The race toward the ultimate semiconductor technology has been fueled by the goal of achieving a convenient performance/power figure within downscaling. Currently there are two contending technologies in CMOS that are used for products. Fully-Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (FDSOI) Field Effect Transistors (FETs) push the limits of the planar transistor geometries and introduce novel means of leakage control through an additional biasing given by a back gate terminal [Beigné]. In particular, Ultra-Thin Body and Box (UTBB) FDSOI is an advanced planar technology that takes advantage of high-κ metal gate and reduced-resistance raised source and drain access. The channel is intrinsic, i.e., without global bulk doping or pocket implants. Shallow Trench Isolation (STI) is used to electrically isolate the devices. An alternative approach is provided by FIN FETs (also called Trigate FETS) that exploit 3-dimensional geometries to achieve a better control of the channel charge, in order to realize high-performance low-power SoCs [Huang]. In a typical FinFET device, the conducting channel is formed by a thin silicon " fin " connected to larger source/drain regions acting as supporting pillars. The gate is wrapped over the channel and controls the three-side of the fin. In addition …