IBM's Transistor Data Revealed

Atryn writes "After last week's story — Intel and IBM both announcing breakthroughs in chip design enabling continued adherence to Moore's Law — many folks wondered how and why the two companies' announcements came out simultaneously. The Register explains it, and as a bonus they are releasing a leaked copy of IBM's future research documentation (PDF)."

Comments

So.....

[MatrixCubed]

Do you work for Intel or IBM?

Answer is clear

[Lithdren]

Intel developed a time travel device and sent a robot back in time to steal the plans from IBM.

And they tried to kill Bill Gate's mother, but you'd be suprised how difficult that was.

You'd think 640 rounds of ammo would be enough to kill anybody.

Silicon Valley will become K-Valley then?

[namityadav]

From Intel: High-K Material is a material that can replace silicon dioxide as a gate dielectric. It has good insulating properties and also creates high capacitance (hence the term "high-k") between the gate and the channel. Both of these are desirable properties for high performance transistors. "k" (actually the Greek letter kappa) is an engineering term for the ability of a material to hold electric charge. Think of a sponge. It can hold a lot of water. Wood can hold some but not as much. Glass can't hold any at all. Similarly, some materials can store charge better than others, hence have a higher "k" value. Also, because high-k materials can be thicker than silicon dioxide, while retaining the same desirable properties, they greatly reduce leakage.

Re:Silicon Valley will become K-Valley then?

[exley]

No. The substrate that these chips are fabbed on is still silicon. The article is somewhat misleading because it's the gate oxide, which is typically made of silicon dioxide, that's being replaced with the hafnium-based high-k material. I'm loathe to site this as a source but since it has pictures, here is a Wikipedia article that will show you the basic structure for anyone unfamiliar.

I also find it interesting that they are using metal gates instead of polysilicon, considering that metal gates were used in the olden days before the switch to poly.

Re:Silicon Valley will become K-Valley then?

[exley]

Despite the fact that you decided to go troll on us with how you responded to the parent post, I'll bite since this was something I got to thinking about as well.

Higher gate capacitance means that you can get more charge in the channel for a given gate voltage (Q=CV). This can give both higer currents and a reduced threshold voltage, which are good things.

But higher capacitance, of course, slows things down when you get to thinking about those RC time constants. So, do the benefits of higher capacitance outweigh the negatives? IBM and Intel seem to think so.

Re:Silicon Valley will become K-Valley then?

[Umbrel]

The improvement is not about increased capacitance in each transistor channel, that would be bad. The capacitance is scpecifically increased in the gate, that means that the gates can be made thicker (less leakage currents = less power consumption) while keeping (or improving) the values for current and voltaje needed to be applied at the gate and the time for the transistor to switch.

Re:Silicon Valley will become K-Valley then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of a sponge. It can hold a lot of water...Glass can't hold any at all.

Try holding the glass right-side up.

Re:Silicon Valley will become K-Valley then?

[exley]

The gate itself isn't inherently capacitive, it's the capacitance of the gate/oxide/channel structure that we're talking about, so you can't decouple gate capacitance and channel capacitance. Charge on the gate (which you can think of as the top plate of a parallel plate capacitor) results in equal but opposite charge on the channel (the bottom plate, with the insulating oxide acting as the dielectric).

You are absolutely correct that the point in increasing the thickness of that oxide is to reduce leakage and power consumption. But increasing the thickness of the gate oxide lowers the capacitance of the structure, so they want high-k materials to compensate for this.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[kfg]

See Swann vs. Edison. Swann demonstrated first. Edison had a personal PR department.

It's all about the marketing. However, in that case the battle was asymetrical, not just in marketing, but in time to market. Having shit on the shelves with your name on it is marketing that's pretty hard to trump.

KFG

Why Adhere?

[camperdave]

... enabling continued adherence to Moore's Law

I don't understand why you would want to adhere to Moore's law. If I were able to make chips 10 times denser, why would I not market that right away rather than waiting for 3-5 years needed to follow the law.

Re:Why Adhere?

[camperdave]

Moore's law is not a law of the universe. It is merely an average rate of development of an industry. It's like saying cars are 2% more fuel efficient each consecutive year. It wouldn't break any law of the universe to suddenly release an SUV that was 10% more fuel efficient than last year's model.

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[ivan256]

It seems more likely to me that they're both announcing this "new technology" around now for a different reason.

The first US patent to mention the use of a hafnium oxide as a dielectric expires later this year.