AMD and IBM work together to improve chip performance
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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and International Business Machines (IBM) have developed a new technology that they claim will deliver higher performance margins, from their latest microprocessors, with dual stress liner technology.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ is pulling out the heavy artillery in its quest to build custom chips for both telephony backbone and handheld wireless devices, announcing a processor family built with silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology that is usually reserved for server processors. By borrowing SOI technology from its line of Power server chips -- includingÂ the top-shelf Power6Â -- IBM will achieve a 30 percent performance gain compared to chips using standard CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) technology, the company said Tuesday. And by building it on a scale of 45-nanometer feature sizes, IBM will achieve higher performance than comparable 65nm chips. IBM will launch this Cu-45HP (high performance) custom chip in early 2008, intended for manufacturers of switches and routers as well as cellphones and portable gaming systems. IBM will design a customized version of the ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) for each new client platform, said Bernard Meyerson, an IBM fellow and chief technology officer for IBM's Systems and Technology Group. The company already builds ASICs for the telephony market, but the new design will allow it to create more powerful designs in less time and at lower cost, he said. To boost power-efficiency, IBM is using 45-nm architecture embedded DRAM (dynamic RAM) instead of SRAM (static RAM) in the chip. Although DRAM has three to four times more memory density than SRAM, the company has never before used it for on-chip data storage because it is "pathetically slow," Meyerson said. IBM solved that problem with a recent advance that improves DRAM read/write data access speeds. Chips run faster and use less electricity when they use data stored on the processor itself instead of fetching that data from another location on the circuit board, he said. Once it launches the new chip, IBM expects to quickly reach full manufacturing capacity. Although the chip uses a new combination of technologies, IBM already builds processors with each of the components, such as the SOI-based processors it makes for gaming consoles including Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Nintendo's Wii. Despite the new features, IBM is announcing the Cu-45HP at a challenging time in the global chip market. Worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $19.9 billion in April, showing a decline from March as average selling prices continued to drop, according to a report released Monday by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). From January through April, sales were down by nearly 2 percent from the same period of 2006, the report said. The revenue slump occurred because prices have sunk faster than a modest rise in demand for consumer electronics. That consumer demand has bolstered the number of unit shipments in the market, but chip makers are collecting less money because of tumbling prices for many types of chips, including microprocessors, DRAMs and NAND flash, according to the SIA. Also on Tuesday, IBM announced new digital and analog semiconductors for mobile handsets and other wireless products. They include the SiGe BiCMOS 5PAe, a silicon-germanium-based analog product for making efficient power amplifiers in cell phones and WiMAX applications, the SiGe BiCMOS 6WL, an entry-level version of the company's existing technology for high-volume consumer electronics including cell phones and GPS (global positioning system) devices, and the CMOS 11LP, a product design to improve power efficiency in handset design. IBM is selling the 6WL design kits now, and plans to launch the other two products later in 2007. Â
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IBM is looking to get a leg up on the competition with the October 15 launch of eServer 326, a rack-mounted server that supports AMD&#39;s upcoming dual-core 64-bit processor.
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Sun to follow? Exclusive AMD has secured yet another major partner win thanks to Opteron. Starting with the Power7 processor, IBM will give up on making its own Unix/RISC box motherboards. Instead, it will plug the Power chips directly into slightly modified Opteron boards in an effort to save money.â¦
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The issue: 65-nm and 45-nm chip components have shrunk so far that they are now smaller than the wavelength of the light used to carve those features onto silicon chips. To fight that trend, AMD and IBM said they will use three new technologies to boost manufacturing efficiency.
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AMD and IBM have extended their CPU technology agreement through the end of 2008. Originally signed in December 2002, the alliance was originally slated to wind up at the end of 2005.
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AMD provides a sneak peek at how its pending quad-core chip will improve performance and save energy.
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Figures from ZDNet Germany labs show AMD's fastest chips outpacing its rival's for mainstream applications.
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By JORDAN ROBERTSON  SAN JOSE, Calif. - IBM has devised a way to triple the amount of memory stored on computer chips and double the performance of data-hungry processors by replacing a problematic type of memory with a variety that uses much less space on the slice of silicon.
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InfoWorld - IBM Corp. has taken a large stride in its race with Intel Corp. to make faster, smaller chips by building silicon transistors from a rare combination of metals.
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Advanced Micro Devices plans to demonstrate its version of a new approach to processor design on Tuesday, with a chip that is expected to offer faster computing and relatively less power consumption.
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(InfoWorld) - In an upgrade that could improve chip performance for gamers and multimedia users, IBM plans to double the performance of its microprocessors in 2008 by using smaller, more efficient memory, according to a paper presented at the ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference) trade show in San Francisco Wednesday. IBM plans to use DRAM (dynamic RAM) instead of SRAM (static RAM) as the embedded memory cache built onto each chip. The change will allow each chip to store its data in one-third the area and use one-fifth the electricity for standby power, said Subramanian Iyer, director of 45-nanometer technology development at IBM. The approach will vastly improve chip performance for multicore processors and for applications that need to move large amounts of graphic data, such as gaming, networking and image-intensive multimedia, he said. IBM is already using the new embedded DRAM (eDRAM) in 65nm prototype chips, and plans to roll it out commercially by 2008 for its entire range of 45nm chips, including its Power line. The technology could have a big impact on consumer electronics, since IBM supplies chips for all three of the top gaming consoles; Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 3, Nintendo's Wii, and Microsoft's Xbox 360. A typical commercial microprocessor like Intel's Core 2 Duo devotes 60 percent of its surface area to memory, Iyer said. Replacing that with eDRAM cells taking up just one-third as much space will allow chip designers to build smaller chips and reduce the "run lengths," the length of wire that data must travel as it commutes around the chip, said John Barth, senior technology staff member and chief of eDRAM architecture for IBM. IBM has used embedded DRAM in its chips for the BlueGene supercomputer, but those PowerPC processors use moderately performing, bulk-technology DRAM, which is far slower than SRAM. To create the new design, IBM will add a high-speed type of DRAM to its current silicon-on-insulator (SOI) architecture. "This DRAM now is almost as fast as SRAM. It may not be as fast at the micro level, but when you get down to 45nm, it will be faster at the system level. It's going to just blow the doors off," Barth said. "A typical microprocessor takes 14 clock cycles to get data from its cache. Using DRAM slows that down, but only one clock [cycle]. By doubling the amount of memory on the die, we can get double-digit percentage gains at the system level." The advance comes at the same time that several other chip vendors are seeking better ways to move large quantities of graphics data. Advanced Micro Devices evenÂ acquired graphics card maker ATIÂ in 2006, and now plans to combine its graphics power with AMD's processing chips in a single chip called Fusion. That challenge was compounded in February, since Microsoft's new Vista OS has a graphics-intensive interface that demands increased PC storage space, faster processors and even separate graphics cards or coprocessors.
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A new semiconductor alloy jointly developed by IBM and its partners will spur the development of faster and smaller memory chips. The companies say the advancements would lead to smaller chips than currently possible with flash memory.
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The design twist will let the company increase the performance of its processors.
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Chip maker says it will use methods other than clock speed to improve processor performance.
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IBM Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) have tacked a three-year extension onto their December 2002 collaboration agreement that could see the two companies work on chip-making technologies based on a 32 nanometer process. The agreement was set to expire at the end of 2005, but now extends until Dec. 31, 2008.
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Advanced Micro Devices has begun to incorporate a form of strained silicon into its chips, a design twist that will let the company increase the performance of its processors.