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

Re:...and they're already obsolete.

[Aadain2001]

You know, I used to get excited by cool new techs like that. Then I talked to someone who works closely with the process design engineers at Intel and other people who actually produce silicon based chips in mass. While those new discovers are very interesting, they usually don't lend themselves to mass production easily, if at all. Some of those new processes take huge, expensive machines and techniques and even then only produce a couple of workable prototypes. It is pure research at it's best. The issue is adapting that to producing millions of these on thousands of wafers every day with a high level of success (90%+ if not higher).

When a semiconducter producer like Intel announces stuff like in the article, it usually means they have a process that will work in mass production and can be available soon. Same goes for announcements from companies like IBM and AMD. So while they may be "obsolete" compared to what the cutting edge researchers are doing, they are definatly cutting edge for what can actually be used to make products actual people will use.