News : Intel Reinvents the Transistor
In a presentation to exclusively invited reporters Friday morning, Intel announced a breakthrough development in microprocessor manufacturing that may be given historical significance in decades to come: the discovery of a new molecular compound material that will replace silicon dioxide in microprocessors using 45-nm and smaller lithographies.
It is what both wide-eyed engineers and anxious executives have described as the "Holy Grail of semiconductor technology," and Friday morning Intel revealed it has developed working 45-nm processor samples running Microsoft Windows Vista, Mac OS X, Linux and other operating systems, where this material - a compound based on the element hafnium, atomic number 72, a frequently occurring impurity in zirconium typically found in fake diamonds - serves as the dielectric gate between the current source and the current drain.
With the hafnium material serving as the gate, Intel will then replace the polysilicon electrode layer with a metal electrode, the exact alloy used here also being kept secret. As a result, transistors for 45 nm semiconductors starting with Intel's Penryn family will be fabricated at half the size of those used in today's 65 nm Core 2 processors. At the same time, transistor switching power can be reduced by as much as 30%, while still obtaining a performance improvement of as much as 20%. And current leakage at the gate will be reduced by a factor of 10.
How big of a page has been turned here, really? Since Intel announces advancements several times a year any more, what makes this one substantive beyond the typical hyperboles reserved for press releases?
Intel's current processor roadmap leaps between processor technology families every two years. We saw the latest leap just last summer, from the last of the Pentium D dual-core processors at 90-nm, to the Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest series at 65-nm. But while this "high-k + metal gate" (HK+MG) development does play into Intel's planned leap to the Penryn architecture, Friday's revelation literally marks only the start of a second era in metal oxide semiconductor production.
It is what both wide-eyed engineers and anxious executives have described as the "Holy Grail of semiconductor technology," and Friday morning Intel revealed it has developed working 45-nm processor samples running Microsoft Windows Vista, Mac OS X, Linux and other operating systems, where this material - a compound based on the element hafnium, atomic number 72, a frequently occurring impurity in zirconium typically found in fake diamonds - serves as the dielectric gate between the current source and the current drain.
With the hafnium material serving as the gate, Intel will then replace the polysilicon electrode layer with a metal electrode, the exact alloy used here also being kept secret. As a result, transistors for 45 nm semiconductors starting with Intel's Penryn family will be fabricated at half the size of those used in today's 65 nm Core 2 processors. At the same time, transistor switching power can be reduced by as much as 30%, while still obtaining a performance improvement of as much as 20%. And current leakage at the gate will be reduced by a factor of 10.
How big of a page has been turned here, really? Since Intel announces advancements several times a year any more, what makes this one substantive beyond the typical hyperboles reserved for press releases?
Intel's current processor roadmap leaps between processor technology families every two years. We saw the latest leap just last summer, from the last of the Pentium D dual-core processors at 90-nm, to the Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest series at 65-nm. But while this "high-k + metal gate" (HK+MG) development does play into Intel's planned leap to the Penryn architecture, Friday's revelation literally marks only the start of a second era in metal oxide semiconductor production.
posted by webprofessional at
11:36 AM
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