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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."
But how many of these transistors would fit on a single human hair?
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Dr. Evil: "And I will design a chip with transistors... 1 MILLION transistors!"
#2: "Uh, Dr. Evil, we've already designed a chip with 1 million transistors, quite a few years ago in fact."
Dr. Evil: "How many is a lot then?"
#2: "1 billion would be very impressive. We're working on that right now."
Dr. Evil: "Alright then... 1 BILLION transistors."
The gate of the transistor, across which electrical current flows to turn the switch on...
You mean there's another type of transistor?
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
Nice Troll!
AMD has to use the naming convention they do, because Intel is making this a race marketing that more GHz means a faster processor. Intel has been engineering their procs for higher clock rate, so that they can market them better against AMD procs that are just as fast with a lower clock rate.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
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.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
That's true. I'd take an AMD at a slower clock rate anyday. But when consumers learn the real speed they're going, they don't like it. I've had a bunch of people buy new AMD systems, and when I tell them what speed they're actually running at, they get skeptical and don't want to buy from AMD again, even after I explain. Consumers don't like being lied to, and for the most part, aren't as dumb as some people make them out to be.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
What, where's not going to benchmark on Mhz cycles anymore?
I can already picture this:
"Buy Intel's new Pentra Plus 2004, the only processor with a billion transistors!!!" (yay, men in blue dance yadda yadda)
"Piter, too, is dead."
The point of making it smaller is so there's less current flow, and thus less heat. Granted, they'll pack more in, so the overall effect will probably be more heat generation, but per transistor, smaller ones do generate less heat.
Faster invalidation of digital media than you ever thought possible!
GMFTatsujin
They've been saying that for years and years now. As long as people continue thinking they need the "latest" in processor technology and shelling out money, the chip makers will find some way. transistors using only a few atoms have already been demonstrated, and people have been throwing quantum computing ideas around for a long time now. In fact, AMD and Intel probably both have active research into these fields, and I wouldn't be too surprised if in 5 years or so they try to one-up each other in trying to announce the first chip built using "single-atom" technology or some other crazy catchphrase like that.
Great, but AMD needs to get their .13 micron process stable first.
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To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
Yes AMD is "a" company made up of "many" people.
So what it boils down to is do you define the company as an entity or the sum of it's people.
Sorry, I'm having my pendanticivitis diagnosed tomorrow!
That's not a billionth, that's only a thousand millionth.
A billionth would be 10^-12
Silly americans.....
There are only two things in this world that smell like fish. And one of them's fish...
Just think about all the DRM they can pack into that baby!
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
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.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
.... this would be the "wee" size. "Not so wee" and "friggin' huge!" are now obsolete.
"So small that they power the palm pilot used by the angel dancing on the head of a pin?"
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
dude, you have been trolled ;) Anyone saying "moore's law" in an /. post is just trolling for replies. don't even bother!
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Imagine the size of the heatsink you'd need for a chip with 1 billion transistors.
...and with the new DRM capabilities, it'll be able to do so much less.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
>For its part, Intel INTC.O plans to detail its development and manufacture of triple-gate transistors in a paper it is delivering at a technical conference next week in Japan, Intel President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini told an Intel conference on Monday.
I do research on double-gate transistors. I have no clue what they mean by a triple-gate transistor. I think that this is another lame intel PR attempt. It's probably like when they made up a new name for FDSOI and called it depleted-substrate or some BS like that and got laughed at. They must want to be one gate better.
Find the 2N2222 in this picture and win a prize!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What pisses me off is that al this is well and good..intel finds this..amd finds that... but i hate WAITING for the tech. to actually be used to some benefit to the end user.
Yea. this means smaller and faster chips for amd..but when...10 years from now?
that transistor count include an enourmous amount of on-die cache, 1 billion transistors is impressive when you consider that it's just the core, not L2 cache.
When will AMD realize that people don't care how *fast* their PC is, but that it has a life affirming, penis enlarging number attached to it!
How does this sound; the AMD 10 GHZ noipcon. Sure, it has the IPC of an 8088, but 10 GHZ -- lets see Intel beat *that*!
It's been a long time.
1) It's a basic idea in engineering that when you are dealing with something abstract (and these are so small that they qualify), then you have to relate it to something familiar.
2) (To quote from Billy Madison)
what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
The simplest way to combat this misperception is to tell someone how much more they would have payed for a comparable performance Intel chip.
I wasn't trying to be funny. They DO run all over!
I think you need to work on your reading comprehension skills.
Once the RIAA gets news of this I'm sure they'll find some hack think-tank that will make the proclamation that according to their data, there is a direct correlation over time between "Transistors Per CPU" and "Music Piracy". Lawyer parties will follow.
(When I started typing this, I was making a joke. But now that I've read it back a few times, this looks more probable than improbable.)
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
... (snaps suspenders)
I've got a 9 nm transmitter right here in my pocket I just whipped up the other day.
This space for rent.
Where on earth am I going to find a motherboard for a CMOS processor?
First CMOS, then Silicon, then Gallium (what ever happened GaAs anyway?), then Coppermine, and now back to CMOS with a silicon fin.....
Mmmrrrppphh, full circle you have come young Jedi.
-Yoda
Now I'm wondering if I should concern myself with getting a hold of a clawhammer or wait until they re-engineer them on a 0.01 micron process :) And since AMD acquired Alchemy Corp. imagine what kind of power you could pack in a PDA... say a really low power duron at 1GHz with some DDR chips (not modules of course) soldered on the PDA's board and maybe a mobile GeForce chipset...
Ah but that's probably 10 years down the road anyways... Sometimes it's painful to know about future technologies, but not be able to get em yet :)
It seems the real question of relevance rests in the new technology they're using to build these devices. The FinFETs have a nice writeup here. They can be built just with the defects from plateaus in normal photo-lithographic processes, thus using the nicely developed techniques usually limited to 125 nm structures to build 10 nm structures. This still means the overall transistor size will be on the order of a a few hundred nm, to deal with contacts, etc, but it is a sight better than standard 0.13 micron transistors, and much easier to use in mass production than e-beam lithography. (Just think about those old vector displays -- that's ebeam lithography for you). Seems like a fine idea for nanoscale structure building, and not one of these technologies may have impacts far beyond just standard IC circuit technology; with 10 nm devices, all sorts of quantum coherent processes become accessible, if you work for them.
The correct verb choice has nothing to do with how many people work at AMD. "AMD" is a single entity, and as such should be used singular forms of a verb. Subjects such as "Engineers at AMD" or "Scientists at AMD" would require a plural form.
So in American English at least, the original Anonymous Coward is correct... though frankly I thought that it was just a mistake, not a Britishism.
... I would have expected tail fins measuring a little bit more than a measly 10nm !
Regardless of whether one considers AMD plural or singular, there's an inconsistency. The headline says "AMD Makes..." and the body of the article says "AMD are".
PS. it's singular, and the headline is correct. But I hates the nit-pickers.
10 Nanometer you say? Whats that in Thickness of Human Hair?
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Actually, while it's true that most people aren't as dumb as we think they are,
it's only after the sale that any form of intelligence can be found.
During the sale, and while you're still at the store, it's all about
the big numbers.
The ultimate system, in my opinion, would use a multistate transistor with ON, OFF, and a dimmer function for everything in between.
Check out the reviews of the 2400/2600+. A lot will actually overclock to ~2.5 GHz now. They've got headroom again. Get over it.
Is there a preference setting where I can filter out total bullshit rants posted by Anonymous Cowards?
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For great justice!
Consumers don't like being lied to
Yeah, but who's lying to them?
AMD rates their processors with a number that looks like a clock speed, but isn't labelled as one.
Intel gives their processors a high clock speed and implies that that makes them inherently superior, when it clearly doesn't.
Technically, neither is lying, but they're both being slightly dishonest. And what are people gonna do to avoid being "lied" to, buy a Mac?
you are right, this week Intel is faster again... I can never keep up with these things.
sic transit gloria mundi
Bless you, AC. I love reading at -1. I like the idea of deciding for myself what is interesting and what is not.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
billion = 32K x 32K (2D) 32 trillion = 32K x 32K x 32K (3D)
The article goes on to suggest that this may lead to a 1 billion transistor chip.
Does it require a radiator to stay cool?
The heat is generated from current running through transistors, and the current is proportional to the width/length ratio of the transistor. With smaller transistors, both width and length decrease, so the current stays the same. Of course, the current is also a function of the voltage across the transistor, and this has decreased some over the last few years, but it's at just over 2v on my celeron 300, and they can't go very much lower without getting into strange technologies like FGUVMOS-transistors and stuff like that (and they won't, at least not for a long time!).
Anyway, the answer to your question is that the same number of transistors made smaller and bunched together would be warmer because heat dissipation decreases with decreased surface area, even though the energy produced by these is the same. If you put more and smaller transistors into the same area, you will get more energy and more heat.
Yes it *does* boil down to all that. I hate to disrpupt your perfect little universe, but just because you can't accept another viewpoint doesn't makes yours the *only* viewpoint.
You can move the whole universe if you view yourself as the center..
You can't move the whole universe if you don't view yourself as the center..
Both are correct statements depending on your viewpoint.
A giant calls me an ant.
An ant calls me a giant.
Both statements are true yet they are in opposition.
Learn Perspective!
Yeah, consumers don't like to be lied to and while Intel's deception that GHz is all that matters and AMD's relative speed naming may turn consumers off... how many of them really *need* the extra speed? Sure I can figure out what to do with 2GHz of speed with xyz IPC (or CPI in my comp. architecture course this past spring) to take the utmost advantage of the speed, but what Joe Schmoe off the streets can do that too?
You've got those that just e-mail and chat online along with listen to CDs or watch DVDs... we're not exactly talking techie types that want bleeding edge stuff.
It's rather funny to watch AMD and Intel battle it out in the R&D departments, arguing over whose silicon dick is smaller.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
When talking about the 'speed' of AMD vs. Intel I make the following analogy (it works every time)
Note: I tell this to non-math non-technical people. The don't want to hear about the details. So *don't* do the math, just imagine it...
"Think of a freeway. If you are standing next to a freeway, the number of cars going past is the amount of work being done. Obviously the more cars going past, the better. Intel builds a two lane freeway, with cars going 200 miles per hour. AMD builds a 5 lane freeway with cars going 100 miles per hour.
Either way, you have about the same number of cars going past. "
Them "Ahhh... so where is the Mega-Hertz thing?"
Answer: "That's the speed of the cars."
Them: "So the Mega-Hertz isn't really how fast the computer goes? "
Answer: "It's just one aspect."
If this conversation went further - I would throw something in like : comparing AMD vs Intel clock speeds is not accurate, because your dealing with different designs (number of lanes, speed of the cars.... )
Create music
Insanely Large Scale Intergrated Circuits?
If your happy with the "I don't believe it so it can't exist mentality...more power to ya!"
I think that's also known as sticking ones head in the sand.
The point of making it smaller is so there's less current flow, and thus less heat. Granted, they'll pack more in, so the overall effect will probably be more heat generation, but per transistor, smaller ones do generate less heat.
You are right though. The smaller they make them the more they'll pack in. Without some kind of active cooling system in the chip the thing will glow like a hotplate.
"The star that burns twice as bright burns half as long." - Bladerunner (the movie, not the 1974 book about a renegade surgeon that performs operations and smuggles medical supplies in a world where medical care is free only if you submit to castration after the Earth was plagued by a lethal spinal meningitis flu. It involves the concept of a national healthcare system overwhelmed by a viral outbreak and the problem of skyrocketing costs to the nation and a eugenics shortcut to cut corners). GOOGLE up [ "Alan Nourse" "Bladerunner" ] or [ "Alan Nourse" "Blade Runner" ] to understand.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
The two naming conventions were in fact devised at different times by the Frenchmen Chuquet (1B=10e12) and De la Roche (1B=10e9). The De la Roche system was in vogue at the time of the revolutionary war (or the colonial rebellion take your pick) and that usage has remained current in America ever since.
This is similar to the changed spelling and pronounciation of aluminum (=> aluminium) in an attempt to systematize its naming. This only occured after the industrial revolution made the once rare metal commonplace and hence the original naming has been preserved in America.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.