IBM, AMD, Sony boost chip speeds by 24%
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Chip-making technique to fuel AMD64, PowerPC, 'Cell' production
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It said it has demonstrated a working version of the technology based on its Opteron chip. By Darrell Dunn. The shift to dual-core microprocessors continues to accelerate.
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The chip that will power the PlayStation 3 is said to be up to 10 times faster than current processors.
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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 are extending a deal which has seen them co-operating on chip-making technology since 2002. The deal was due to end next year it will now run until December 2008.
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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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A look at some of the technologies that could allow the silicon industry to deliver faster, cheaper chips.
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By Subashini Selvaratnam  INTEL Corp is working on a new 45-nanometre (nm) transistor technology which will boost the processing speeds in personal computers (PCs), laptops and servers.
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Advanced Micro Devices says it has reached a chip manufacturing milestone that will lead to improvements across its range of processor offerings for PCs and servers.
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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 latest research from the company claims PC makers are accelerating their move to solid state memory, with hybrid drives being the early market entry choice.
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New products include slightly faster mainstream models and new lower-power server chips.
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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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Breaking the speed barrier of traditional flash memory, Intel and Micron Thursday announced a new flash memory architecture that increases the data transfer rates in consumer electronics by cutting the bottlenecks affecting conventional NAND flash memory.
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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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Researchers at IBM and Advanced Micro Devices have improved a chip-making technology called strained silicon, boosting semiconductor performance at a time when such
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Researchers at IBM  and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.  have improved a chip-making technology called strained silicon, boosting  semiconductor performance at a time when such gains are increasingly hard to come by, the companies said on Sunday.