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Intel Cites Breakthrough In Transistor Design
n3hat was one of many who wrote in to tell us about the following: "Saw this report in Siliconvalley.com, 'Intel has devised a new structure for transistors that could lead to microprocessors that run faster and consume less power than conventional ones.
The technology solves two of the more intractable problems: power consumption and heat.' It goes on to say that Intel plans to present two major elements of the new "TeraHertz" transistor structure at the International Electron Device Meeting in Washington on Dec. 3.
For you "oldtimers" out there these sorts of announcements must come with quite the sense of humor: Anyone remember BYTE magazine pronouncing the end of the line in advancement every 6 months or so back in the mid-late 80s? Each time stating that "Moore's law" would stop holding true and we've have to move to neural nets or analog computers for continued advancement. Quite humorous really.
After all, SOI technologies are not new and people have been trying different gate insulators forever. The problem with alternate gate insulators has been cost for yield. Unless this has also been solved and this process gets moved into fab, it's just another research lab thingee.
Must be a slow news day for nerds...
That is all.
That's AMAZING, they announced that?
What's next, a means of DOUBLING HARD DRIVE SPACE? Maybe someone soon will announce they've figured out a way to make screens BIGGER and CHEAPER....
It amazes me some of the stuff that slashdot rejects when compared with some of the stuff that gets posted.
I submitted something over the weekend about someone at indymedia.org who was detained at an airport and questioned aboput posts he'd made to a web discussion group under a pseudonym.
Yes, that's right, he was pulled aside at an airport and they not only knew exactly who he was, but his nick and specific posts he'd made.
Seems to scream "YRO," but hey, we gotta make space for stories about bigger hard drives and faster, cooler processors that may see the light of day eventually.
The story is here, btw.
This may be a stupid question - but after all I only buy and use processors, I don't design them.
That said, how about Intel taking what seems to me to be the next logical step, and combining what is essentially simply a new insulator breakthrough with an actual design shift like clockless processor design - like we all read about a couple of weeks ago here on Slashdot.
Since clockless design is supposed to pave the way for faster, less power-hungry parts, and this new insulator technology allows you to use less power and achieve higher speed chips - wouldn't the two technologies be complementary?
Okay, stupid question finished - feel free to flame me!
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
The point is that we desperately need processors that produce less heat and use less energy. If you take a moment to think about it, it's totally ridiculous that we need so many noisy fans inside a computer that someone's using to compose an email.
If you're using a high-end computer solely to compose email, I'd argue that the problem isn't the hardware.
Heck, if power is a concern, buy a Dreamcast and use the web client to access Hotmail. $50, and you get a low-power embedded box that you can read and write email and even play games on.
Desktop systems are overpowered because people want to be able to run insanely high-powered applications on them, no matter how much of a waste this is when they're not playing Quake XIV.
It's even more ridiculous when you consider that some graphics processors require a fan as well, and so does the power supply.
Same thing. A real-time realistically rendered 3D environment requires one hell of a lot of computing power to generate. This means heat. If you're just answering email, buy a PCI Rage XL card and save on the fan and heatsink.
Now if only they'd come up with a breakthrough that will make fast, long lasting, solid-state hard drives a reality.
They're called "flash cards".
If you want to store gigabytes of images or gigabytes of game install files, however, they won't be sufficient.
RAM is harder to make per unit storage space than a magnetic platter. This is just the nature of the universe - RAM is intrinsically more complex. A magnetic platter is just a flat surface with the right kind of coating; it doesn't get much simpler than that. You can buy a solid-state drive off the shelf right now, but the the cost will reflect the fact that it's harder to build, and this will continue to be the case for quite a while.
In summary, the problem isn't the technology, it's the fact that people *want* insanely powerful computers, with large amounts of storage, for the lowest price that still gives them the power and space they crave.
for the depleted substrate explanation see my post above:
h ol d=0&commentsort=3&mode=thread&pid=2615361#2615436
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24164&thres
the Si layer above the insulator reduces recombination and leakage which plagues SOI.
they may even be able to ground this thin layer to reduce the "floating substrate" problem in SOI. but then i think punchthrough will be a problem.
as for the gate dielectric this is where we can't use low K as we NEED higher capacitance to modulate the channel. The higher K allows a thinner oxide increasing the control over teh channel and we can thus further invert the channel. especially with gate lengths getting so short.
We want low K dielectrics in the matal layers for the reasons you stated (lower cap.).
this is a big increment for intel and the industry.
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