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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
A fab is huge, most of the people who work on a site are completely ignorant of the details of how such deep magic is performed, most of those thousands are only concerned about keeping the xyz network up or replacing/upgrading servers in the datacenter.
Many of the machines are closed units which only ever get opened by a small number of techs.
Actual knowledge of how they do what they do can be kept between a surprisingly small group of people.
Yes someone could take a stab at it but much of the time it's the fine details rather than the general idea that make an idea workable.