Intel's 3D Transistors One Step Closer to Reality

An anonymous reader writes "Reducing power consumption is the name of the game in today's semiconductors and Intel today described its tri-gate transistor technology as one of the key technologies that could free the company from the trap of thinner gate insulators and increasing current leakage. Tri-gate (three gates instead of only one) could reduce the power consumption of transistors by 35% right now and drops off-voltage - one of the main sources of current leakage - by 50%. These results are the good news. The bad news is that tri-gate won't be available until 2009."

Comments

Unclear what the problem is.

[jd]

Tri-gate electronics do, in fact, exist. They predate the transistor by several decades. Thermionic valves were capable of this very early on. I'm assuming that the problem is related to the fact that the medium used is not inherently 3D, making it hard to stack the gates in the way illustrated in the article, but the article itself doesn't say.

Tunnels sound very interesting. Leakage presumably has many causes, but would boil down to electrons leaving the desired path and going elsewhere. There MAY be ways of replacing the interconnects (which are usually just regular conductors) with superconductors, as superconductors should leak a lot less. (Resistance is a function of leakage, and superconductors have zero resistance.) This won't fix links on the silicon itself, but any improvement would be a good thing.

Re:Intel cooler than AMD!

[Brian Stretch]

And what is AMD doing in R&D lately?

They could tell you, but then they'd have to kill you. Seriously, AMD doesn't like to trumpet things that are years away from production or otherwise give Intel unnecessary clues about what they're up to. Intel... well, we were supposed to have 10GHz P4's by now...

Sure, they are the favorite this year, but do they have the R&D budget Intel has to remain competative in the long term?

Is the same management in charge of Intel's R&D budget? Looks that way. Besides, there's the law of diminishing returns at work. Plus AMD trades technology with IBM. Working with clueful partners is a heck of a lot more efficient than trying to do everything yourself (and pushing those potential partners into the AMD camp).

Precisely

[Sycraft-fu]

People get confused with just how damn long it can take to turn the first development of a new idea in to an actual product.

Look at Nanotubes. We STILL don't have any commercial produciton using Nanotubes going on and it's been about 15-20 YEARS in the making (depending on which start point you take). It started in 1985 with the discovery of fullerenes, the carbon buckyballs you hear about. Nanotubes themselves were orignally discovered in 1991. Since then there's been a lot of development in their uses and in their production, but still we do not see products on the market with them. I've a feeling we are getting close, but it's still years off.

That's just how it goes. There's a long time between something first being mesed with in a highly theoritical research context and it being something that we are all buying. It can be decades, hell it can be longer. How long have we been after fusion as a power source? 40 years? Maybe, MAYBE in another 20 we have it? Research is often not a fast process, it just takes lots of time trying things, learning, trying again, etc. It's not always osmething money can accelerate, sometimes it just takes a lot of time to do everything you need, sometimes you have to wait for development in other areas to make yours practical.

Either way, Intel's announcement is exciting for consumers because it's approaching the consumer level. Sounds like in 3-5 years we will be using thigns based on this. The GP's technology is neat, but nothing consumers should care about since at this point there's no prospect of consumer application. Perhaps in 10-30 years it'll be something to look at, but not now.

Re:Precisely

[Aadain2001]

Yup, there is a big difference between acedemic research and industry research. Acedamia can announce ideas that could not be made into useable products for 10-30 years because they don't really care. They are in it for the research. But in industry, you are usually working on a shorter time frame. Sure there are people working on ideas that may not work for decades, but they are the minority and usually the grayed haired geniuses that did things like create the transistor or the Internet. They already proved they are visionaries and can work on long ranging projects.

P.S. Please forgive any rambling/spelling/grammer mistakes on the alcohol I've had tonight.

Re:Not fully 3D

[karvind]

It is not true that they aren't working on 3D technology. It is just that they haven't figured out a mature manufacturable process. In the end, Intel is not there to push Moore's law if it doesn't have economic benefits.

In real estate business there are 3 important factors: Location, Location , Location

In semiconductor industry (which is becoming a commodity), there are 3 factors as well: Cost, Cost, Cost

You mentioned about the heat issue. Yes it is important. But no one said you can't solve it. You can have structures which can distribute heat out (e.g. heat pipes). You can also have circuit techniques which are by default more process tolerant as well as low power (eg. asynchronous circuits). Both solutions wouldn't solve the problem completely, but yes it will be a step ahead. Then why don't do it. Industry still hasn't figured out if the cost to develop these techniques will harness them enough profit as compared to pushing the conventional techniques.

Also know one said that you can't extract 1000 W/cm^2 in ICs. It will just cost quite a bit.

So yes your point is well taken, but don't undermine the industrial goals. Profit comes first.