Intel announced that it had again found a way to make computer chips that could process information more quickly and with less power in less space.
The transistors on computer chips — whether for PC’s or smartphones — have been designed in essentially the same way since 1959 when Robert Noyce, Intel’s co-founder, and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently invented the first integrated circuits that became the basic building block of electronic devices in the information age.
These early transistors were built on a flat surface. But like a real estate developer building skyscrapers to get more rentable space from a plot of land, Intel is now building up. When the space between the billions of tiny electronic switches on the flat surface of a computer chip is measured in the width of just dozens of atoms, designers needed the third dimension to find more room.
The company has already begun making its microprocessors using a new 3-D transistor design, called a Finfet (for fin field-effect transistor), which is based around a remarkably small pillar, or fin, of silicon that rises above the surface of the chip. Intel plans to enter general production based on the new technology some time later this year.
Although the company did not give technical details about its new process, it said that it expected to be able to make chips that run as much as 37 per cent faster in low-voltage applications and it would be able to cut power consumption as much as 50 per cent.
Intel currently uses a photolithographic process to make a chip, in which the smallest feature on the chip is just 32 nanometres, a level of microscopic manufacture that was reached in 2009. “Intel is on track for 22-nanometre manufacturing later this year,” said Mark T Bohr, an Intel senior fellow and the scientist who has overseen the effort to develop the next generation of smaller transistors.
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The company’s engineers said they felt confident to solve the challenges of making chips through at least the 10-nanometre generation, which is likely to happen in 2015.
However, despite its promise and the company’s bold claims, Intel’s 3-D transistor is still a controversial technology within the chip industry. A number its competitors believe that Intel is taking a disastrous multibillion-dollar gamble on an unproved technology.
©2011 The New York Times News Service