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IBM: Chip Making is Hitting Its Limits, But Our Techniques Could Solve That (zdnet.com)
IBM has devised materials and processes that could help improve the efficiency of chip production at the 7nm node and beyond. From a report: The company's researchers are working on challenges in the emerging field of 'area-selective deposition', a technology that could help overcome limitations on lithographic techniques to create patterns on silicon in 7nm processes. Semi Engineering has a neat account of lithographic patterning and why at 7nm there's growing interest in area-selective deposition. Techniques such as 'multiple patterning' helped ensure integrated circuits kept scaling, but as chips have shrunk from 28nm to 7nm processes, chipmakers have needed to process more layers with ever-smaller features that need more precise placement on patterns. Those features need to align between layers. When they don't, it leads to 'edge placement error' (EPE), a challenge that Intel lithography expert Yan Borodovsky believed lithography couldn't solve and which would ultimately impede Moore's Law.
Figure out how to solve the quantum tunneling gate leakage power problem and you've got a winner. Photolithography has never been identified as a show stopper to continued gate shrinkage. Gate leakage at these dimensions is.
With 7nm chips currently being produced in the tens of millions.
...that, probably, only a few people here will understand. I'll simplify it: /s
They want to work at a very small scale, using very big words.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
This is some research twaddle that if / maybe / someday. My question is, how are they going to get this to market? License to ARM?
It's sad. I worked for them when they created the PC (yes, that long ago). They've right sized themselves into a company that used to be meaningful. I guess they'll live off of mainframe and whatnot for a whole, but...
Instead of using lots of scripting languages and VM with frameworks that suck up huge volumes of memory and are so poorly written they require large amounts of CPU time to do very little, perhaps there should be a return to an emphasis on more effcient compiled languages that only use what resources they need at any given time.
Yeah I know, get off my lawn etc. But that fact that script kiddy coders don't like being told that their toy language is a bloated CPU hogging mess doesn't change the reality of the situation.
Instead of using lots of scripting languages and VM with frameworks that suck up huge volumes of memory and are so poorly written they require large amounts of CPU time to do very little, perhaps there should be a return to an emphasis on more effcient compiled languages that only use what resources they need at any given time.
With VMs:
Without VMs:
In an environment with "more efficient compiled languages" replacing VMs and big frameworks such as React or Qt, how would you recommend to bridge platform gaps?
I hope someone or many someones out there are working on reversible computing. It sounds like the only long-term way forward. https://spectrum.ieee.org/comp...
Why won't anyone belieeeeeve us?
You're next on their lists, Americans.
Don't worry Comrade, we'll be spreading our special brand of democracy and freedom to your land soon enough.
What did you do there AC? Empty trashcans or get coffee for people with a clue?
Basic R&D is what got us the cool toys we have today. Companies doing research for the sake of research that may not be immediately profitable. This is what brought us wonderful things like the UNIX operating system and the microprocessor.
Most *progams* only run on one architecture anyway but perhaps you've not heard of compile time options in code that allow you to use the same source code for multiple platforms.
If you have designed your application with a model-view-controller paradigm, you can reuse the model layer across multiple platforms. However, you cannot so easily reuse view code across Win32, Cocoa, X11, Android, and Chrome OS DOM platforms without a multi-platform framework such as Qt, and I assume Qt is one of the "frameworks that suck up huge volumes of memory" that you mention. And even if you cross-compile your application to a platform that you don't have, it's a bit harder to cross-test the responsiveness of a GUI application, such as to test the macOS and iOS ports of your application without owning a Mac and an iPhone or iPad.
IBM sold their chip manufacturing facilities to Global Foundries. They literally laid off all of the people capable of creating microchips. Now IBM is saying that they have a new technology that will solve chip manufacturing issues? Sounds like another patent ploy to me.
Did they sell all of their semiconductor business except designing POWER chips to Global Foundries?
I like the spreading kind!
They did not sell it, because they did not get money for it.
They bought getting out of the semiconductor manufacturing business by giving GloFo their factory and a significant amount of money (I remember about $1.5bn but don't quote me on this).
Now IBM is, among other things, a fabless chip design company (like many others), since they design the Power and Z (mainframe) processors.
Why not keep it simple, & return to the DIP package (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_in-line_package). What I wouldn't give for a desktop with a multi-level backplane & card-cages.
There are programmer boot camps, which can turn people with limited experience in programming, into low end developers for specific web programming stacks, complete with experience in certain IDEs. For a sub top 1000 web site, the bloat will be economically worth it. A well visited web site, like Amazon, will spend the bucks on good programmers, and avoid the bloated frameworks.
This is what brought us wonderful things like the UNIX operating system
quote the opposite. multics tanked, OS research was BANNED. employee(s) who had their computer/OS taken away decided to write a spare one. started one person IIRC. on company time. borrowed a computer from another department.
when it was discovered, they could have been fired and perhaps "theft of company resources (computing time, power) " ... instead "make a word/text processing type system for office use, and we'll sell that, with the OS underneath"
other unix people covered this up partially, not necessarily for ego or embarrassment, but likely a) guilty parties themselves, part of an agreement b) still on company dime/time, just basic marketing thing.
skunkworks from day one. you take their os/computer away from an operating system research people, tell them they can "Design" but no longer implement since multics tanked ....well, that is what happens. they come up with a new one anyway.
it was DESPITE management and IN SPITE OF "companies doing research" that got UNIX.
they had forbidden it at that point, due to overhype of multics and it failing to be the ONE operating system to rule them all, licking their wounds.
the "OS research team" IGNORED what they were told to do (no more implementing)
i can totally see IBM doing the same thing. dunno if an employee would ignore them and do it anyways.
to research this, read interviews from the unix people.
Yes, on Windows the DLLs take quite a big amount of space, but only on disk
Is this true of macOS as well? This becomes doubly important as Macs switch to SSDs. And for developers who have a lot of users stuck behind satellite Internet or cellular tethering at $5 to $10 per GB, how well do Qt DLLs compress for distribution?
Besides, testing cross-compiled macOS binaries can still prove expensive for a micro-ISV.