Shrinking chips use novel recipe

[DesertFox]

The chip industry's unrelenting quest to build smaller, faster microchips has taken another step forward.

Chip maker Intel has launched a range of processors, known as Penryn, which will power the next generation of PCs.

The tiny chips contain a novel material and have features just 45 nanometres (billionths of a metre) wide.

The only PC processor in the line-up of 16 chips packs 820 million of the tiny switches into an area little bigger than a postage stamp.

"Had we used the same transistors that we used in our chips 15 to 20 years ago, the chip would be about the size of a two-story building," said Bill Kircos of Intel. ...

In the latest generation of Intel chips, critical elements of the transistors, known as gate dielectrics, do not perform as well.

As a result, currents passing through the transistors leak, reducing the effectiveness of the chip.

To overcome this, Intel has replaced the gate dielectrics, previously made from silicon dioxide, with a material based on the metal hafnium.

Hafnium is a so-called high-K material, which refers to its dielectric constant, and has a greater ability to store electrical charge than silicon dioxide.

The exact recipe for the new material has not been revealed but Intel says that it offers greater performance at such tiny scales.

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore has described the inclusion of hafnium as "one of the biggest transistor advancements in 40 years".

More (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7085480.stm)

[DoctorDoom]

It matters not a jot how fast the CPU is as long as it's limited by outside-world connections. The CPU must talk with the Northbridge and Southbridge chips and thence to other systems and components on the mobo—RAM, AGP, PCI, etcetera. The connections are physically long enough that the speed of light becomes a limiting factor.

And as long as computers still use mechanical hard drives, there will be a bottleneck that bogs down the whole machine.

CPU speed is a gee-whiz matter, and will continue to be so until the speed of everything else can be jacked up to match it. As such, I predict that within a few years the major part of the computer will be on one mutha big chip, with only the slower lines exiting—video, audio, I/O et al.

For now, warp speed CPUs are for show.

[DesertFox]

And braggin' rights.

[DoctorDoom]

That too.

[gnome]

And high-end mathematics, I'd say.

[DoctorDoom]

Judging by the prices cited in the article, they're not likely to be found soon in Wal-Mart package puters, and they have no consumer value in any case. They're for high-end scientific/financial systems and ultra-geek machines.

[DesertFox]

Ya mean, we ain't likely to get anybody with one a them machines here on FC? :question: :D

[Rhino]

Judging by the prices cited in the article, they're not likely to be found soon in Wal-Mart package puters, and they have no consumer value in any case. They're for high-end scientific/financial systems and ultra-geek machines.I dunno. They used to say the same thing about computers, that they have no consumer value.