http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-intel5nov05,1,2306439.story?coll=la-headlines-business
Intel Finds Method to Plug 'Leaky' PC Chips
The company says its breakthrough could boost computing
power while lowering its cost.
By Terril Yue
Jones
Times Staff Writer
Intel Corp. said Tuesday that it had figured out how to
shrink transistors for PCs so that 1 billion could fit on a single chip, making
it possible to pack the power of a supercomputer into a device the size of a
deck of cards.
Loading a chip with so many transistors — Intel's Pentium 4
microprocessor for personal computers holds about 55 million — would give it
mind-boggling muscle while potentially lowering its price.
Intel's breakthrough was in finding new materials to replace
silicon in the microscopic gates that control whether a transistor is on or
off. With silicon gates as thin as five molecules, as they are in the successor
to the Pentium 4, they leak significant amounts of energy. The new materials
not only prevent leaks but also enable a transistor to work faster, the Santa
Clara, Calif.-based company said.
"It's as if the construction industry decided that
concrete and steel had reached the end of their road and need to be
replaced," said Rob Willoner, a manufacturing
technology analyst at Intel, which is the world's largest chip maker.
Chips built with the silicon-replacement materials would
breathe new life into
"We have removed the industry's most challenging
roadblock to ensuring Moore's Law spans into the next decade, ultimately
leading to much lower-cost computing power and enabling applications that
cannot be imagined today," said Ken David, director of Intel's components
research group.
Intel said its researchers replaced the silicon in the gate
electrode, which operates like an on-off switch, with a new metal-based
material that the company wouldn't identify for competitive reasons. The new
gate will be insulated from the silicon on which transistors are etched with a
substance Intel calls High-k for its capacity to hold an electric charge. The
company wouldn't disclose the recipe for High-k either.
Willoner likened a silicon gate to
a faucet that drips. The High-k insulation stops the leaks, and that will
enable smaller and smaller transistors to be more efficient, he said.
Martin Reynolds, an analyst with the technology market
research firm Gartner Inc., said the new chips would be "smaller, faster,
cheaper" and would "drive the continuing advance of electronics into
our lives."
Intel believes it can introduce the High-k and metal gate
technologies in chips set to hit the market in 2007, when the company plans to
introduce a new generation of computer microprocessors. The new technologies
shouldn't add much in cost or entail significant modifications in
manufacturing, David said.
With today's chip technology, the industry is "pushing
the edge of being able to do real-time recording of video, one TV channel at a
time," said Steve Kleynhans, an analyst with
META Group, a technology industry analysis firm.
"Maybe a billion-transistor microprocessor will be able
to record all TV channels simultaneously, in high definition, or produce
high-level, unbreakable algorithms for security, or real-time simultaneous
translation — problems that can only be handled by supercomputers today," Kleynhans said.
Intel shares fell 36 cents to $33.68 in Nasdaq trading.
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Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times