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0.01 Micron Process?
hypo writes "According to a recent ZDNet article, IBM is developing a technique called "V-Groove", that allows the channel lengths of transistors on chips to be 10 nanometers (0.01 micron) and below. Currently, most companies use a 0.18 micron or 180 nanometer process. This is certainly a giant leap. The only caveat is that IBM is not planning to use this in large chips (i.e., processors) for 10 to 15 years. However, this is still quite revolutionary because most people thought that a 0.02 process would be the fundamental minimum. This all shows that Moore's law can perhaps hold true in the future. This article also discusses Carbon Nanotubes, which might research market faster than experts had previously thought."
Maybe with this tech 3dfx can make a voodoo5 small enough to fit inside my computer case.. :)
Numbers like 0.18um or 130nm are actually associated with.the minimum feature size. In actual chips, the metal widths are almost never drawn at the minimum feature size. The poly layer however can be drawn at the minimum features size and it is what defines the transistor channel length.
Crosstalk between wires is not just a function of their decreasing spacing because the aspect ratio of wires is also increasing very significantly (anywhere between 50-100%) leading to a larger lateral area. Copper processes allow wires with a smaller aspect ratio but the same resistance per square leading to the decrease in coupling capacitance. Low k dielectrics also are used to decrease the interconnect capacitance.
The problem that we are currently facing is that transistors are fast enough that the critical paths in a modern chip is almost entirely due to the delays of long global interconnects. There are many things we currently to do speed up these wires including shielding, buffer insertion, and simply more intelligent routing.
10 to 15 years is the time frame for them to get machines that can make these paths on a large (30-60 million transistor) scale, plus the time for them to build enough of said machines to actually be able to produce enough of these chips for people to care (if you can't buy it, then who cares how fast it goes), plus then the time for them to build a plant to house these machines, plus the time (after that) of installing the machines and doing test runs. There are all sorts of stuff that it's easy to do a couple of times, but it gets hard when you're expected to do it a couple billion times.