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Intel: Metal in Future Chips = Less Leakage (updated)
securitas writes "Intel is contemplating using metal instead of silicon in future chips for the 'transistor gate, which controls whether a transistor is on or off' and the 'dielectric, an insulating layer below the gate,' which are respectively made of silicon atoms and silicon dioxide. 'Millions of minuscule switches that make up silicon chips leak electricity when they're supposed to be shut off. To compensate, engineers have increased the current, driving up power consumption, decreasing battery life for portable devices and generating more heat.' AMD has also experimented with metal instead of silicon. By moving to metal AMD and Intel expect to reduce electricity leakage. More from AP via SeattlePI and the Miami Herald." Update: 11/05 15:25 GMT by T : Read on below for some information from Intel on why this is a good thing.
gManZboy writes "Following up on the Intel news that about using metal in chips -- here's an explanation from Shekhar Borkar (Intel Research Fellow) about why heat, power, and sub-threshold leakage, not transistor size, are the real challenges to Moore's law. Apparently, in order to make chips much faster, we're going to have to pump more electricity in then anything else in our houses -- and they'll soon be as hot as a nuclear reactor -- no, really."
...diamonds?
I thought that the manufacture of diamonds was set, and only needed to step up its production. Gemesis has been making, for less than $100, gems that would be worth hundreds of thousands if naturally mined.
The most promising thing about these diamonds is that, being cheap, they open the door for cpu cooling. Diamonds are tolerant of exponentially higher temperatures than silicon, so why aren't we hearing about intel, amd, motorola, ibm, TI, and sgi taking advantage of this new technology.
Metal? What about metal is unprecedented? What about it has kept us from using it before? Diamonds are the future, not metal.