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IBM Demonstrates High-k/Metal Gate Chips

Posted by kdawson on from the faster-and-thriftier dept.

Last summer we discussed twin announcements from Intel and IBM/AMD about a new chip manufacturing technology dubbed high-k/metal gate. Intel is using the tech to improve speed and power consumption in its 45-nm chips. IBM, along with its manufacturing partners, just demonstrated chips it says show that high-k/metal gate technology at 32 nm can result in performance gains up to 30% and power savings up to 50%, compared to 45-nm process. IBM plans to be manufacturing 32 nm parts by the end of 2009. (AMD is not using high-k/metal gate yet, but it has access to the technology by virtue of its agreements with IBM.)

6 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. pretty cool by voislav98 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and it just goes to show that silicon is not dead yet

  2. I hope AMD uses this technology by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Interesting

    AMD earned my loyalty many times over the years, and now that it's fallen from the top of the price/performance heap, I feel bad buying another chip. This is the company who made the chip for my first computer, that made 64 bit mainstream, and made intel actually improve their products. They've done so much for the industry, it'd be a shame for them to continue taking a pounding like they have.

    Also, I own some of their stock. Go team!

    1. Re:I hope AMD uses this technology by Saffaya · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You should buy whatever has a good price and good quality. I disagree in the sense that your comment is incomplete.

      The moral behaviour of the company making the product is to be taken into account, at least it is in my case.

      If company A has tried to screw me over several times (defective products), kept lying about it, and engages in generally anti-competitive behaviour, then I will buy products from company B instead.
      Even if B's product are less competitive by a certain margin left to my appreciation.

      Some will say that I am acting against how the market is supposed to work, that is not true.
      Business honesty and customer consideration IS valuable to my eyes, and I factor it in the final price of the product.

      Hence, I will pay more to buy B's product.
    2. Re:I hope AMD uses this technology by TheRecklessWanderer · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Good for you!

      I used to buy a lot of maxtor drives. Probably 2 or 300 a month. Then I tried to return one, and they gave me a hard time.

      Now I buy a lot of Seagate and WD Drives. No Maxto Drives.

      Since Seagate and Maxtor have jumped in bed together, I just buy WD Drives.

      --
      Mean what you say...say what you mean.
    3. Re:I hope AMD uses this technology by CajunArson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This shit gets modded insightful? I had long suspected that to get an insightful mod on this website all you had to do was follow the formula of: 1. bash a company that has earned Slashdot's 2 minutes of hate award (Intel here); 2. blather on for more than 4 words to give the illusion of thought; 3. Throw in some non sequitur numbers to look like you know math.

      I don't have time to take apart every number in this stupid troll but, first of all: AMD does not use FSB's at all, and you have no idea what the "1.6Ghz" number you are quoting actually means... you are (ironically) trying to throw around frequency numbers to make the bigger number look better for AMD (wow sounds a lot like that "megahertz myth" everyone on Slashdot adores so much). Take a look at how badly the Phenom cache architecture works sometime, you'll see that core to core communications on those chips are only about 2% faster than when Intel chips have to use the FSB, and when Intel chips in dual core are using shared cache they communicate roughly 3 times faster than the best-case for the AMD chips. Hypertransport IS useful... but only for 4+ socket server systems where there are real advantages. On desktop machines & laptops the differences are negligible, and there can even be disadvantages when talking to a graphics card on a desktop machine (but I don't think the AMD powerpoints you were working off of mentioned that did it?)

        Second of all, you claim that if an Intel machine has to move a whopping 1 whole MEGAbyte of data a second around it somehow gets irreparably crippled to the point of not even being able to use a mouse or something. Lets actually run some numbers, even using your artificially low laptop ratings for the Intel FSB (desktops are much faster, and you are also failing to count the faster FSB used on Penryn laptops that are already on the market). Let's see here: 800 Mhz FSB * 8 bytes per clock (64 bit data bus) comes out to 6.4 Billion bytes per second. Your "massive" 1.2 Mbyte/sec transfer is therefore completely choking off... wait for it... about 0.02% of the bandwidth. OH NO MY COMPUTER IS GOING TO FREEZE IF ONLY 99.98% OF THE BANDWIDTH IS AVAILABLE!!

          Oh wow, you apparently can count processes and found out that your computer runs more than one program at a time? Guess what, I ran firefox (version 2 mind you not the nice & faster version 3) on a 2.4Ghz P4 just fine, and I could even run other programs at the same time! Now, I was using Linux of course, but you are either 1. lying, or 2. completel y incompetent when you say that somehow it is impossible to run more than one program "smoothly" on anything but an AMD system.

          Third (and this takes the fucking cake): You compare the intenionally low-power EEE PC from Asus that INTENTIONALLY uses very low power, very slow chips from Intel because it is targeting the ultra-mobile market, and then because this laptop, which is INTENTIONALLY designed to be slower & low power does not perform as well as a laptop that costs 3 times as much and comes with 4 times the RAM and has a massively more expensive and power hungry CPU and graphics processor in it. Yes you stupid fuck, I actually looked up the model number you posted. I'm sure you thought that you could put it right next to a mention of the EEE PC and think you could fool everyone into thinking the only difference was an Intel vs. an AMD chip. The only thing you've managed to prove is that there are AMD fanboys brainwashed enough to believe that because the EEE PC exists, it is physically impossible for anyone to use Intel chips in something that might run faster.

          That's all I have time for. You are either truly brainwashed, or are smart enough to know the Slashdot system to getting "insightful" mods when you are literally posting objectively proveable lies.

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
  3. Take a look at the literature by JSchoeck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Graphene is not at all nearly ready to even build reliable, well-performing transistors with it. I'm in a research group that is trying to implant a gate electrode into Silicon-carbide with a Graphene layer ontop, but that's still basic research. If it should really work with good yield and that also in an industrial process, then we can talk about Graphene-based CPUs.

    And by the way: it's spelled "Arsenide"