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.

Comments

Yeah, yeah...

[rabtech]

Every other month someone comes out with a "breakthrough" in microprocessor design that could "someday lead to smaller and faster chips" that "use less power."

I am not blaming only Slashdot for presenting this kind of fluff, I blame the major news organizations as well. Until these companies are getting ready to ship a product, I don't want to hear about it, because so much if it becomes vaporware. What little is left ends up being only slight improvements wrapped in marketing buzzwords.

Give me more content and less fluff please.

Re:Yeah, yeah...

[Compuser]

No, Intel basically dropped the bomb and announced
that they have achieved the holy grail by finding
a better insulator than silicon dioxide and they
claim this new material is "manufacturable", which
I take to mean "fits within current process without
too much investment". If true this is a fundamental
thing and not at all fluff.

Amd?

[Spackler]

It goes on to say that Intel plans to present two major elements of the new "AMDhurtz" transistor structure at the International Electron Device Meeting in Washington on Dec. 3.

IBM and AMD First

[sabinm]

NPR had a report on this eariler today regarding this
"Terahertz" chip. It seems both IBM and AMD had developed this technology and Intel snubbed it, citing that it was to expensive to implement. There is nothing breakthrough about "fast switching" electrons, just the fact that INTEL released a press story about it makes it interesting. Ho hum

Improvement not limited to processor.

[rice_burners_suck]

OH WELL.

I was impressed by the idea of Transmeta's Crusoe processor because it greatly reduces the increasingly complicated problems of heat and energy efficiency. However, I've heard rumors that their product isn't getting widespread acceptance for some reason. Perhaps speed or reliability. Who knows.

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. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that some graphics processors require a fan as well, and so does the power supply.

If successful, Intel's breakthrough in transistors could solve or greatly reduce these and other problems. These solutions aren't limited to the processor! All the chips in your computer contain transistors. Reducing the size, heat and energy usage by tiny amounts in each transistor will yield enormous benefits. Suddenly, a fan won't be required on the main processor or the graphics processor. Look at how much energy you save, not only in the transistors themselves, but in removing the fans, which themselves need energy to remove the unnecessary heat! It may be possible to remove the fan altogether from the power supply, resulting in less noise and even less wasted energy.

Now if only they'd come up with a breakthrough that will make fast, long lasting, solid-state hard drives a reality. Then the computer will be silent and use much less energy yet. We're getting there. It's only a matter of time and money.

OH WELL.

Okay, now what about gate delay?

[Erich]

We expect that transistors keep getting smaller, and faster about the same rate as they get smaller. Gate delays are (looking out 5 to 10 years) not a big worry.

The big worry is wire speed. Wires aren't getting much faster, even though dies are getting larger and clock frequencies are getting faster. It used to be that getting from point A to point B on a chip was no problem to do at the end of a clock cycle. Current processors are getting to be so fast that you can't get from one place to another in a whole clock cycle in some cases. Unlike transistors, wire delay gets worse as size gets smaller, because resistance goes up fast (scales with cross-sectional area), and wire delay is proportional to R*C. You can do some tricks to keep wire speed the same, but relative to switching speed and transistor size it still gets bad quickly.

Routing information around is the problem of the future. You get free computation on the way, but getting from point A to B is the hard part.

That being said, fast-switching, low-power transistors are nice. :-)

And, for all you patent-ballyhooers, Intel will patent this (probably). As they should. Other companies will license this patent from Intel in the same way that Intel licenses patents on other aspects of their processes from other companies. That's the way things work.