SEMICON WEST, SAN FRANCISCO, USA: The SOI Industry Consortium announced that NVIDIA, a leader in visual computing technologies, has joined the organization.

The SOI Industry Consortium, which was formed in October 2007 by a group of leadingcompanies from across the electronics industry, is aimed at accelerating silicon-on-insulator (SOI) innovation into broad markets by promoting the
benefits of SOI technology and reducing the barriers to adoption.

NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market, the professional design and visualization market, as well as the high-performance computing market. Their products are transforming visually-rich and computationally-intensive applications such as video games, film production, broadcasting, industrial design, financial modeling, space exploration, and medical imaging.

NVIDIA brings the SOI Consortium membership to 23 companies. Other members include: AMD, Applied Materials, ARM, Cadence Design Systems, CEA-Leti, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Innovative Silicon, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Magma Design, Samsung, Semico, Soitec, SEH Europe, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, TSMC, Tyndall Institute, UCL and UMC.

"NVIDIA is pleased to join the SOI consortium. We are looking forward in participating on the advancement of such an innovative technology and its applications to future products," said John Chen, VP, Technology and Foundry Operations at NVIDIA.

"We are honored to partner with NVIDIA. Their unique insight and perspectives as the world leader in visual computing will be very valuable in articulating the technology direction of the consortium," says Horacio Mendez, executive director of the SOI Industry Consortium. "NVIDIA' s entry into the SOI Industry Consortium supports the momentum we are gaining throughout the electronics industry from end-users and enablers to suppliers and manufacturers," added Mendez.

The SOI Industry Consortium is open to any company, organization or academic institution with an interest in SOI.