Intel Moving Forward With 10nm, Will Switch Away From Silicon For 7nm

An anonymous reader writes: Intel has begun talking about its plans for future CPU architectures. The company is already working on a 10nm manufacturing process, and expects the first such chips to be ready by early 2017. Beyond that, things are getting difficult. Intel says it will need to move away from silicon when it develops a 7nm process. "The most likely replacement for silicon is a III-V semiconductor such as indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs), though Intel hasn't provided any specific details yet." Even the current 14nm chips they're making ran into unexpected difficulties. "While Intel didn't provide any specifics, we strongly suspect that we're looking at the arrival of transistors based on III-V semiconductors. III-V semiconductors have higher electron mobility than silicon, which means that they can be fashioned into smaller and faster (as in higher switching speed) transistors."

Comments

Re:To answer your question

[tigersha]

Intel was heavily invested in VLIW, and developed Itanium. That did not go well, and AMD brought out x64 and ate their lunch. Intel adopted AMD's instruction set and Itanium is basically dead now.

Planes, trained agents and planetary automobiles.

[Anonymous Coward]

> III-V semiconductor such as indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs

I think the french will like it and possibly the swedes. They use Gallium and Indium based semiconductors in airborne electronic warfare systems, which allows for very high RF energy output in physically very small and high temperature tolerant packages. (For example used in the Dassault Rafale and SAAB Gripen fighter jets). The french SPECTRE jamming suite is especially famous: the Rafale plane is not stealthy, only has reduced radar reflection, but the french trusted their system enough so their pilots were already flying deep in lybian airspace by the time the US Navy started to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles at Gaddhafi. Supposedly there is something equal or better in the american F-35 JSF, but that airframe is so buggy one must wonder if it will ever enter service?

On the other hand non-silicon semiconductors, like Ga and IN tend to cost twice the price of pure gold per weight or more. At the most extreme end, the soviet-russians even created diamond-based semiconductors, for use in space weapons and a planned Venus robotic rover. They invented a diamond crystal growing machine for the purpose, which after the Cold War was sold to a US company, which nowadays grows and sells multiple carat "cultured" yellow diamonds for ladyfolk decoration purposes. Beware, that femme fatale may wear a supercomputer on her finger! Now you know why multiple-finger gesture support was developed by Synaptics...

Re:Resource wars

[Troed]

Despite their name, rare earth elements (with the exception of the radioactive promethium) are relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million (similar to copper). However, because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated as rare earth minerals in economically exploitable ore deposits.[3] It was the very scarcity of these minerals (previously called "earths") that led to the term "rare earth".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Re:amazing

[LWATCDR]

Cray did it first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Seymour Cray build a GaAs based computer almost 20 years ago. It actually worked but he ran out of money because of the end of the Cold War and the need for Super Computers decreased.