Intel Claims 10Ghz Transistor

Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary writes: "Intel has developed a new CMOS chip technology that cranks out 10Ghz, 400 million transistors per chip, with each transistor only 3 atoms thick, previously thought impossible. See story at Dial Electronics " While this story's rather fluffy, it makes it sound like Intel is a few years ahead of it's earlier projection of reaching 10Ghz by 2005. Of course, maybe they meant integrated into actual chips;) (in which case 2005 still sounds nice).

Comments

atom movement

[roguerez]

My physics is a bit rusty, but if I'm not mistaken these 3-atomic layer thick transistors must have some problems because at this level the predictability of atom movement comes into play.

Every atom has a certain frequent movement. Objects consisting of a large number of atoms stay in one place because the movement of all those atoms combined adds up to zero.

Theoretically, it's not impossible that your dinnertable would suddenly be a couple of meters away from its original place. But it's the statistics that make such an event impossible in practice.

When creating objects very small - consisting of only a few atoms - the movement of every atom get's more important. Chances that the movement of one or more atoms influences the behavior of the object itself (in a way that its behavior is not predictable anymore) are a reality when creating transitors this small.

Therefore I'm amazed by the comment of the Intel scientist that these transistors behave just like other - bigger - devices.

Re:10Ghz transister, not CPU!

[df1m]

They don't say the transistor runs at 10GHz, they say it is very small, and will allow the creation of chips that run at 10GHz.

- dave f.