Intel, IBM Announce Chip Breakthrough

Intel announced a major breakthrough in microprocessor design Friday that will allow it to keep on the curve of Moore's Law a while longer. IBM, working with AMD, rushed out a press release announcing essentially equivalent advances. Both companies said they will be using alloys of hafnium as insulating layers, replacing the silicon dioxide that has been used for more than 40 years. The New York Times story (and coverage from the AP and others) features he-said, she-said commentary from dueling analysts. If there is a consensus, it's that Intel is 6 or more months ahead for the next generation. IBM vigorously disputes this, saying that they and AMD are simply working in a different part of the processor market — concentrating on the high-end server space, as opposed to the portable, low-power end.

Comments

Two breakthroughs in one day?

[zero-one]

With this breakthrough and that other one perhaps Moore's Law needs updating.

Re:Two breakthroughs in one day?

[kharchenko]

Yes, Moores' law didn't account for dupe postings. If we could just post this news a few more times today we could jump decades ahead in terms of transistor density! Keep up the pace dear editors :)

Axiom?

[rumith]

The Intel announcement is new evidence that the chip maker is maintaining the pace of Moore's Law, the technology axiom

I thought it's an empiric law; the definition of axiom is quite different from that.

Intel said it had already manufactured prototype microprocessor chips in the new 45-nanometer process that run on three major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Again, I thought it's the operating systems who run on microprocessors, not vice-versa. And I [not being a kernel developer, though] can't see any reason for an OS to stop functioning on a new processor model if the architecture is intact and no serious hardware-level bugs are introduced.

This is a big deal

[noopm]

As a graduate student researching this field, this is an amazing bit of news! - The intel high-k announcement is a *major* breakthrough, and a new, disruptive technology for chip technology especially as far as the the introduction of new materials in the Fab are concerned (and trust me, Fab engineers are paranoid about such kinds of shifts). It essentially involves replacing the SiO2 dielectric gate insulator with a new class of materials, very likely Nitrided Hafnium Silicates (though they have not publicly acknowledged the silicate part, they just mention it as a compound of Hafnium - it is the leading contender in the field).

The high-k film can be made physically thicker than the very thin SiO2 layer (which is only around 12 Angstroms thin at the moment, making it leak like a sieve) without messing up the capacitance requirements for the transistor. The introduction of new metal gate instead of the classic poly-crystalline silicon (called poly) is also abig deal, and there is greater secrecy on what those materials are. The wikipedia article on high-k has the details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-k_Dielectric

Rename?

[somegeekynick]

What, now Silicon Valley becomes Hafnium Valley?

Re:RFI? Electromigration?

[cheezedawg]

Golly- I hope that all of the PhDs working on Intel's 45nm process are reading /. today. I bet they never thought about that.