ALKHOBAR, 30 January 2007 — Several announcements this month ensure that Moore’s Law, a high-tech industry axiom that transistor counts double about every two years, will thrive well into the next decade. What isn’t clear is which company, Intel, IBM or HP, will be the ultimate winner in the next generation chip race. Each of the companies is targeting a different area of chip design. In the end, certain of these developments employed in tandem could yield even better results than any one on its own.
In a major advancement in fundamental transistor design, Intel Corporation revealed that it is using two new materials to build the insulating walls and switching gates of its 45 nanometer (nm) transistors. Hundreds of millions of these microscopic transistors — or switches — will be inside the next generation Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon families of multicore processors. The company also said it has five early-version products up and running — the first of fifteen 45nm (billionths of a meter) processor products planned from Intel.
The early versions of the new chip will be targeted at different computer market segments including Windows Vista, Mac OS X, Windows XP and Linux operating systems, as well as various applications. Intel’s next generation 45nm family of products are codenamed “Penryn.” The company remains on track for 45nm production in the second half of this year.
Intel is the first to implement an innovative combination of new materials that drastically reduces transistor leakage and increases performance in its 45nm process technology. The company will use a new material with a property called high-k, for the transistor gate dielectric, and a new combination of metal materials, as yet unrevealed, for the transistor gate electrode.
“The implementation of high-k and metal materials marks the biggest change in transistor technology since the introduction of polysilicon gate metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) transistors in the late 1960s,” said Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. Transistors are tiny switches that process the ones and zeros of the digital world. The gate turns the transistor on and off and the gate dielectric is an insulator underneath it that separates it from the channel where current flows. The combination of the metal gates and the high-k gate dielectric leads to transistors with very low current leakage and record high performance.
IBM has also announced that it has developed a long-sought improvement to the transistor. Working with AMD and its other development partners Sony and Toshiba, the company has found a way to construct a critical part of the transistor with a new material, clearing a path toward chip circuitry that is smaller, faster and more power-efficient than previously thought possible. As important, the technology can be incorporated into existing chip manufacturing lines with minimal changes to tooling and processes, making it economically viable.
The achievement is expected to have widespread impact, leading to improvements in electronic systems of all kinds, from computers to consumer electronics. IBM has inserted the technology into its state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing line in East Fishkill, NY, and will apply it to products with chip circuits as small as 45 nanometers starting in 2008.
“Until now, the chip industry was facing a major roadblock in terms of how far we could push current technology,” said Dr. T.C. Chen, VP, Science and Technology, IBM Research. “After more than 10 years of effort, we now have a way forward. With chip technology so pervasive in our everyday lives, this work will benefit people in many ways.”
The technology, called “high-k metal gate,” substitutes a new material into a critical portion of the transistor that controls its primary on/off switching function. The material provides superior electrical properties compared to its predecessor, enhancing the transistor’s function while also allowing the size of the transistor to be shrunk beyond limits being reached today.
As important as the new material itself, is the method for introducing it into current manufacturing techniques. The creation of this transistor component with the new material was accomplished by the IBM team without requiring major tooling or process changes in manufacturing — an essential element if the technology is to be economically viable.
And earlier this month, HP announced the results of research that could lead to the creation of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) up to eight times denser — while using less energy for a given computation — than those currently being produced. Moreover, such chips could be built using the same-sized transistors as those used in today’s FPGA design, meaning they could be built in current fabrication facilities with only minor modifications.
FPGAs are integrated circuits with programmable logic components and interconnects that can be adapted by end-users for specific applications. They are used in a wide range of industries, including communications, automotive and consumer electronics. HP is working on producing an actual chip using the approach, and could have a laboratory prototype completed within the year.