Soitec is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 semiconductor

Semiconductor

A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...

 manufacturer which specializes in the production of Silicon-On-Insulator

Silicon on insulator

Silicon on insulator technology refers to the use of a layered silicon-insulator-silicon substrate in place of conventional silicon substrates in semiconductor manufacturing, especially microelectronics, to reduce parasitic device capacitance and thereby improving performance...

 (SOI) wafers

Wafer (electronics)

A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor material, such as a silicon crystal, used in the fabrication of integrated circuits and other microdevices...

. Soitec is listed on the Euronext Paris

Euronext Paris

Euronext Paris is France's securities market, formerly known as the Paris Bourse, which merged with the Amsterdam, Lisbon and Brussels exchanges in September 2000 to form Euronext NV, which is the second largest exchange in Europe behind the UK's London Stock Exchange...

 exchange , and its headquarters are located in Bernin,
France.

The company was created in 1992 by two researchers: André Auberton-Hervé and Jean-Michel Lamure from CEA-Léti

Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique

The Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives or CEA, is a French “public establishment related to industrial and commercial activities” whose mission is to develop all applications of nuclear power, both civilian and military...

 (one of Europe’s largest microelectronics research institutes) located in Grenoble

Grenoble

Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...

, France.

Soitec is using the Smart Cut

Smart Cut

Smart Cut is a technological process that enables the transfer of very fine layers of crystalline material onto a mechanical support. The application of this technological procedure is used mainly in silicon-on-insulator...

 technology instead of the previous SIMOX which is less manufacturable in high volume. The Smart Cut represents about 90% of the SOI market, and Soitec represent about 80% of this Smart Cut market. The remaining share of the Smart Cut market is serviced by SEH (Shin Etsu Handotaï), which has been licenced since 1997. Siltronic

Siltronic

Siltronic AG，is a Munich based company, which is one of the top Silicon Wafer suppliers in the world. It is 100% owned by Wacker Chemie AG and the single european-based Wafer supplier....

 also purchased a licence in 2004.

Soitec's clients include AMD, Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. is a producer and designer of embedded hardware, with 17 billion semiconductor chips in use around the world. The company focuses on the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets with its product portfolio including microprocessors, microcontrollers,...

, Mitsubishi Electric

Mitsubishi Electric

is a multinational electronics and information technology company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group....

, OKI

Oki Electric Industry

, commonly referred to as OKI, OKI Electric or the OKI Group, is a Japanese company manufacturing and selling info-telecom and printer products. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, OKI operates in over 120 countries around the world....

, IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 Microelectronics, Philips Semiconductors, Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, Toshiba

Toshiba

is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...

, and more. Some of these companies have chosen to develop their major market applications — servers

Server (computing)

In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...

, PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

s, watches, automotive sensors, game consoles, HTDV televisions, and like so — on Soitec products.