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IBM Leapfrogs Intel With 22nm Chips
Slatterz writes "Intel may be touting 45nm CPUs, but IBM says it can go much further with a strategy to produce future chips using a 22nm fabrication process. The company is adopting a technique called 'computational scaling' in order to manufacture circuits small enough to deliver more powerful and energy-efficient devices. Intel plans to introduce 32nm chips in 2009, but chipmakers have hit a problem in that current lithographic methods are not adequate for designs as small as 22nm owing to fundamental physical limitations. IBM claims to have solved this problem." Unfortunately the phrase "computational scaling" doesn't actually convey any information about how they've solved it.
If I figured out how to do something that would lay a serious hurting on my competition, I wouldn't exactly go around saying how I did it either.
Instead of just saying they're going to do it.
Talk is cheap.
The article doesn't mention when such chips would be ready for production and I doubt that IBM's original press release sheds any light on that subject. So all this COULD mean is that IBM only announced their breakthrough ahead of Intel, not that they are ahead or behind Intel.
It's still good to see that Moore's law is hanging in there.
Full Tilt
"...but chipmakers have hit a problem in that current lithographic methods are not adequate for designs as small as 22nm owing to fundamental physical limitations. IBM claims to have solved this problem."
This is virtually the same statement made every time a smaller fabrication process is announced. It conveys no information. Obviously some physical limitation was preventing them from making smaller circuits, and then they overcame them to make them even smaller.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
The semiconductor manufacturing industry pretty moves together as a whole. Even if one company is out in front in terms of technology it isn't that far ahead, which is why so many companies just focus on design and have foundaries make their stuff.
Actually it is "that far ahead", but the investments are so absurdly huge only a few companies can afford to keep up. Do the math, going from say 65nm to 45nm means the surface area is halved but the real business difference is in the margin. Say it costs AMD 100$ to make, maybe they can sell it for 110$. Enter an Intel 45nm, they produce it for 50$ and still sell it for 110$. Which is why AMDs Atom competiton is ridiculous - yes it can concievably keep up on performance but the margins are abysmal compared to the extremely small die size of an Atom which means Intel will be the only one making any money. In the long run it'll be better for everyone if Intel stumbles a little and competition stays intense, because they are bleeding their competitors dry. Notice that Intel is making substantial pushes into UMPCs, mobile devices, motherboards (more than chipsets before), graphics and SSDs. All of that is funded first and foremost from their superior process technology, their designs are good too but not that spectacular.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10810046
Though a more recent article stated that the first plant using 15nm won't be online until late 2011, or early 2012 at the latest.
In the silicon production market there is usually about a 5 year, or more, period between when something is announced, and when it is in production. Which means we will see IBM's 22nm process as early as late 2013.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Well, unfortunately it's a bit like the problem with conspiracy theories: anything that needs the complete cooperation of thousands to keep a secret, isn't going to really stay a secret. Building a 22nm fab is going to require a lot of stuff, and a lot of people knowing what is being done there, how, and why. It takes only one disgruntled employee, or some chinese subcontractor going, "hmm, I wonder what'd they buy that big an electron gun for... too big for electron microscopy... could it be they're using electrons at this many electron-volts instead of light?" to lose that trade secret in a jiffy.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes, I got that impression too, it's not so much that their chips are the most fantastic on the market but rather that they can produce more, faster and for less money than everyone else.
Nanometers aren't discrete units, you know.
The real reason they don't skip generations is because it's not cost effective. Intel is making a killing on its tick/tock model where they shrink the process in one model and change the architecture in the next. This way, they can pipeline. They can have their semiconductor people working out how to make it smaller while the VHDL people are throwing together a new chip. They each have twice as long as if they were coordinated, delays in one don't necessarily affect the other, and everybody is kept busy.
If they wanted to skip a generation, then the fab guys would probably take longer, which means they'd have a time when they weren't pumping out new, incrementally better CPUs to sell to people. They'd make less money, and the consumer would have to wait longer to get something better.
I don't see how that would be a problem. Being able to put more transistors on a chip != have to put more transistors on a chip. In this case, having a better process would lead to higher profits, so there is an incentive to advance process technology ASAP.