IBM, AMD speed chips by straining silicon wafers
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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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Sheets of graphite only a few atoms thick could lead to ultrafast computer chips.
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AMD and IBM today announced that they have developed a new and unique strained silicon transistor technology aimed at improving processor performance and power efficiency.
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The firm is planning new ways to shrink transistors and increase chip speed. Could "spintronics" replace silicon-based technology?
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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) - Advanced Micro Devices is undaunted by rival Intelâs recent headline-grabbing announcements of 45-nm (nanometer) processing technology and a deal to supply Xeon chips to Sun Microsystems. Interviewed at the DesignCon 2007 conference in Santa Clara, Calif., last week, Steve Polzin, chief platform architect in the Computation Products Group at AMD, said his company would, in time, also use 45-nm manufacturing technology through its alliances with Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. âWe have access to very similar technology that weâll be able to use in 45-nm,â Polzin said. âItâs a weapon in our arsenal.â Intel sent tremors through the hypercompetitive chip market last week when it made good on promises to begin producing 45-nm chips by the second half of this year. More concerning for AMD, Intel said the new chips would consume less energy and generate less heat than existing chips, thanks to a new material dubbed âhigh-kâ that is used in the insulating material for transistors. Polzin would not commit on a time frame for when AMD would use 45-nm, except to say that the company would do so âwhen it makes sense.â AMD currently uses 65-nm processing technology in its Opteron CPU line. âPushing technology for technologyâs sake is not what we do,â Polzin said. The 45-nm technology will be applicable from systems ranging from laptops to datacenters, he said. Intel does not have a big jump on AMD, said analyst Mary Olsson of Gary Smith EDA, and 45-nm systems will not be heavily used for three to four years. As for Sunâs deal to use Intel CPUs after having relied on only AMD for x86 chips, Polzin said the arrangement was not unexpected, with Intel now leveraging AMD-championed technology in Xeon. âWe knew that one of the key factors that attracted Sun to AMD was the 64-bit extensions to x86,â Polzin said. âAMD64 is great technology. Intel decided to copy it, so what the heck.â Sun, as an AMD customer, is free to choose whichever suppliers it wants, Polzin said, adding that Sun is one of its âvery valued customersâ and that the companies still work closely. At the conference, Polzin cited the evolution of processors, which have grown from 16-bit to 32-bit and 64-bit units. Multicore processors also have arrived, he noted. The company plans its quad-processor Opteron offerings for a midyear release. Eight-core chips are on the drawing board as well. In 2009, the company plans to offer graphics processors and CPUs on the same chip as part of its Fusion initiative. This technology will be offered in the mobile Turion chip, Polzin said.
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IBM today said it has demonstrated a technique that triples the performance of a standard semiconductor transistor with a process that is compatible with conventional CMOS technology.
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AMD e IBM hanno rilasciato congiuntamente un comunicato stampa, con il quale annunciano lo sviluppo di nuove tecniche di produzione per transistor strained silicon, che beneficia di una migliore gestione del consumo a paritÃ  di frequenza di clock.
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Your processor can now run 24% faster at the same power levels based on the new strained silicon transistor technology, as claimed by IBM and AMD today.
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Microprocessor maker AMD and IBM have developed a strained silicon transistor technology aimed at improving processor performance and power efficiency.
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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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(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. Both companies announced in January that they had discovered theÂ special materials needed to build "high-k metal gate" transistors. The special materials are much better insulators than standard silicon dioxide, a crucial trait as chip designers struggle to fit more and more transistors on each microprocessor, since electricity tends to leak from the closely-packed wires, making them hot and inefficient. Until now, neither company had announced the ingredients of this new mix of materials. But IBM researchers said on Monday they had used their Blue Gene supercomputer to model 50 combinations of hafnium dioxide and basic silicon. The company plans to build chips based on the new mixture in 2008. The new material looked good in theory, but IBM engineers had to create simulations of different mixtures to avoid any surprises when they added it to semiconductor production lines, said Alessandro Curioni, a supercomputing expert at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory. Curioni was one of three authors who published this research in a paper published in the January edition of the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. The team used new algorithms and a Blue Gene/L supercomputer with 4,096 processors to crunch the numbers. The program took about five days to run a simulation for each combination of ingredients, modeling the interaction between individual particles for the 600 atoms in every model. If the researchers had used a typical notebook PC, the 250-day job would have taken them 700 years, he said. Despite IBM's advance, Intel insists it is on track to reach markets first with chips using its own type of "high-k metal gate" transistors. Intel plans to use the technology in a family of 45-nanometer architecture chips scheduled for launch later in 2007, the company said. Â
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For decades, computer performance has been driven largely by the increasing numbers of ever-smaller transistors squeezed into the machines' silicon brains. With each generation, speeds jumped and prices dropped.
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IBM--in a race with Intel--moves to make faster, smaller chips by building silicon transistors from a rare combination of metals.
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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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IBM (NYSE: IBM) researchers today announced an advancement in computer-based simulations that is helping to drive chip technologies to new heights of performance and function.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. - Despite an apparent slowdown in the IC market, IBM Corp. plans to boost the wafer output within its 300-mm fab over the next quarter, according to the company on Monday (Oct. 18).