“Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, has overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for a new generation of faster and more energy-efficient processors,” John Markoff reports for The New York Times.
Markoff reports, “Company researchers said the advance represented the most significant change in the materials used to manufacture silicon chips since Intel pioneered the modern integrated-circuit transistor more than four decades ago.”
Markoff reports, “The microprocessor chips, which Intel plans to begin making in the second half of this year, are designed for computers but they could also have applications in consumer devices. Their combination of processing power and energy efficiency could make it possible, for example, for cellphones to play video at length — a demanding digital task — with less battery drain.”
“Currently much of the industry is building chips in what is known as 90-nanometer technology. At that scale, about 1,000 transistors would fit in the width of a human hair. Intel began making chips at 65 nanometers in 2005, about nine months before its closest competitors,” Markoff reports. “Now the company is moving on to the next stage of refinement, defined by a minimum feature size of 45 nanometers… Intel said it had already manufactured prototype microprocessor chips in the new 45-nanometer process…”
“The work by Intel overcomes a potentially crippling technical obstacle that has arisen as a transistor’s tiny switches are made ever smaller: their tendency to leak current as the insulating material gets thinner. The Intel advance uses new metallic alloys in the insulation itself and in adjacent components,” Markoff reports. “Word of the announcement, which is planned for Monday, touched off a war of dueling statements as I.B.M. rushed to announce that it was on the verge of a similar advance.”
“Intel’s advance was in part in finding a new insulator composed of an alloy of hafnium, a metallic element that has previously been used in filaments and electrodes and as a neutron absorber in nuclear power plants. They will replace the use of silicon dioxide — essentially the material that window glass is made of, but only several atoms thick,” Markoff reports. “Intel is also shifting to new metallic alloy materials — it is not identifying them specifically — in transistor components known as gates, which sit directly on top of the insulator. These are ordinarily made from a particular form of silicon called polysilicon.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David G.” for the heads up.]
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