IBM, AMD work on straining silicon
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IBM and Advanced Micro Devices have come up with a new way of straining silicon in a move that will allow them to make chips with better performance.
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Companies will use strained silicon to boost transistor speed.
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Advanced Micro Devices will add &quot;strained silicon&quot; to its microprocessor lineup this quarter, a company spokesman confirmed Friday, an esoteric technique used to improve performance.
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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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IBMÂ and Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD) have jointly developed a new method for implementing strained silicon technology on both positive and negative transistors, the companies said Monday.
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AMD and IBM have developed a strained silicon transistor technology which the firms believe will dramatically increase processor performance.
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AMD and IBM announced a collaborative breakthrough in processor technology today, marking the first use of two new techniques that advance speed and performance without requiring more power.
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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will implement the strained silicon manufacturing technique on its upcoming 90-nanometer processors as well as 130-nanometer processors released this quarter, an AMD spokesman said Friday.
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Intel will try to further cut power consumption in its next generation of chips by using improved strained silicon, along with transistors that block power to other circuits, and other added features.
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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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Intel Corp. will shift to a second-generation strained-silicon technique within its forthcoming 65-nanometer process technology, the company will announce on Monday.
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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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SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA - The days of relying on shrinking transistors to achieve performance gains are over, and the chip industry needs to enter a new era of innovation where system-level features are just as important as thinner transistor gates, said IBM Corp.'s Bernie Meyerson in a keynote address at the Fall Processor Forum Tuesday.
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The days of relying on shrinking transistors to achieve performance gains are over, and the chip industry needs to enter a new era of innovation where system-level features are just as important as thinner transistor gates, said IBM Corp.
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Advanced Micro Devices and IBM will work together to devise chip-manufacturing technology for three additional years, a deal that will bring about a quarter of a billion to IBM over four years and give AMD access to cutting-edge chip inventions.
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Advanced Micro Devices has been facing profit pressure--but new chipmaking techniques are giving it more room to lower prices.
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IBM announced Tuesday that it has created a process allowing its manufacturing facilities to repurpose otherwise scrap semiconductor wafers.Since the silicon wafers need to be nearly flawless in order to be used in computers, mobile phones, video games, and other consumer electronics, the imperfect ones are normally erased with acidic chemicals and discarded. IBM had been sandblasting its castoffs&#160;to remove proprietary material. Some of the pieces, called &quot;monitors,&quot; are reused for test purposes.The new process cleans the silicon pieces with water and an abrasive pad, leaving them in better condition for reuse. The entire process to clean an 8-inch wafer is about one minute. Eric White, the inventor of the process, said that IBM can now get five or six monitor wafers out of one that would have been crushed and discarded. The cleaned wafers can also be sold to the solar-cell industry, which has a high demand for the silicon material to use in solar panels. White said that shortage would need to be &quot;extreme&quot; to use the wafers in consumer electronics and that IBM does not plan to do so.The IBM site in Burlington, Vt., has been using the process and reported an annual savings in 2006 of more than $500,000. Expansion of the new technique has begun at IBM&#39;s site in East Fishkill, N.Y., and 2007 savings estimates are more than $1.5 million. The Vermont and New York plants are IBM&#39;s only semiconductor manufacturing sites.Chris Voce, an analyst with Forrester Resarch, does not anticipate savings for the end-user, but added, &quot;When a semiconductor company can improve its process and drive efficiency into their manufacturing process, that&#39;s always great for their margins, but it&#39;s even better when there are broader benefits for the environment.&quot; Annually, IBM estimates that the semiconductor industry discards as many as 3 million wafers worldwide.IBM plans to patent the new process and provide details for the semiconductor manufacturing industry.