AMD Makes 10-Nanometer Transistor

Yorrike writes: "Reuters is reporting that AMD are about to reveal their smallest double-gate transistor to date. From the article: 'The gate of the transistor, across which electrical current flows to turn the switch on, measures 10 nanometers, or 10 billionths of a meter.' The article goes on to suggest that this may lead to a 1 billion transistor chip."

Comments

Same.

[Perdo]

This is the same transistor that IBM was talking about. They are sharing (or stealing) this technology. Electron microscope pictures are of the same transistor.

Re:Same.

[unicron]

Intel employee: You built a 10nm transistor! We we're doing that! You must've stolen it!

AMD employee: You are aware we make the same product, right? Any technological advances either one of us makes, rest assured the other isn't far behind. Surely you don't think you are the only cpu manufacturer interested in reducing transistor size, right?

Intel employee: I'll shut up now.

Re:I'm confused

[Raul654]

IIRC, a human hair is .25 mm in diameter. (.25 thousanths of a meter) The transistors are 10 nanometers (billionths of a meter)

(.25*10^-3)/(10*10^-9)=25,000 transistors would fit into the diameter of a human hair.

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. A non-double-gate one :)

Press Release Slants

[FuzzyDaddy]

It's amazing how two press reports on the same breakthrough claim it's significant for entirely different reasons.

The earlier press release talked, in a half assed way, about the performance benefits. This one talks, in a half assed way, about the reduced size.

Of course, this happens because whoever digests these things for us unwashed masses doesn't understand what the hell they're talking about.

And the gate length has much more to do with the performance, not the transistor density, as the transistor density is dominated by the via sizes and interconnect sizes.