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Lightning Rods for Nanoelectronics
dcunning writes "Over the last several years (in my short view) there has been a fairly constant hum as to whether or not processors will continue to be able to keep up with Moore's law. Usually this question (and the arguments answering it) is phrased in terms of the ability to continue to shrink transistors/wires/etc. and escape such things as electron tunneling, etc. Scientific American has an interesting article titled Lightning Rods for Nanoelectronics discussing the how's and what's of another issue: handling electrostatic charges as devices become smaller (and hence more sensitive to both the shock and the resultant heat.) After all, being able to build a 100GHz chip is useless if merely breathing on it will fry its circuitry."
This is a really important consideration. Most people don't even know how sensitive modern electronics are to ESD. Heck, you don't even have to TOUCH something to fry it these days, the electric field itself can be strong enough to zap cmos devices.
Taking a training class on ESD control was a real eye-opener; seeing it demonstrated before my eyes drove home the point that ESD safety precautions are CRITICAL when working on stuff.
Since taking that class, we have implemented an ANSI 20.20 compliant service bay for PC hardware, and requested that all our distributors ship us parts manufacturer-sealed (they used to 'test' motherboards before they sent them to us). We have reduced our number of returns from customers immensely since then.
Learn how a CPU works before you learn to program. Seriously.
I'm sort of stuck to say anything other than "and?".
Basically for this stuff to be a problem it needs to be into widespread manufacturing and that's not going to happen for a long time (we are still using 0204 [2milx4mil]discrete components for example and 00501's are available and we aren't using them) due to the cost of production.
Otherwise, yes ESD is a problem and the only answer is better ESD handling and better circuit design to counter ESD issues. Current TTL electronics can be utterly blown by someone touching it so it won't be any different.
Having non-conductive stuff surrounding your chip is the wrong way to go - you really want to have something that conducts electricity. Static is caused by the buildup of electrical charges that don't have anywhere to go. If you get enough of them, and if they happen to be in some inconvienent place such as on the gate of a transistor that isn't electrically well connected to anything (because, say the next transistor up the line that controls this one happens to be turned off), the charges can break through the insulating layers between the transistor gate and the substrate of the chip (substrate -> the big hunk of silicon or whatever that the transistor is built on). This can cause catastrophic damage to the transistor gate, and then the chip don't work no more.
It takes much more charge to break down a transistor gate than it does to simply turn it on, so the trick is to cover it in something that conducts well enough to bleed off excess (i.e. static) charge, but not so well that it shorts out the device. Add to that the fact that the material needs to be a good thermal condutor, not contaminate the chip with anything that messes up the semiconductor chemistry, etc., and it becomes a pretty tricky materials problem.
At work (I make chips) we have condutive floors, conductive rubber pads for people to work on, and anyone who handles the chips needs to have a grounding strap on. We also sometimes use air ionizers in regions where chips are exposed so that the air itself becomes somewhat conducting. When I think about how much more sensitive a modern processor is than the devices I work with, it's amazing to me that they work at all by the time they make it to the average user's home.