Intel and IBM tout 45nm High-K tech (and lofty giraffe)

Small yet powerful -- that's IT Blogwatch: in which Intel and IBM both announce new chip-making techniques. Not to mention the giraffe in my attic...

Ben Ames and Dan Nystedt fill us in:

IBM Corp. and Intel Corp. accelerated their horse race in semiconductors when each unveiled over the weekend similar chip-manufacturing advances. The research from both companies involves a crucial building block -- called high-k material -- to build smaller, more efficient transistors in microprocessors. High-k materials are better insulators than standard silicon dioxide, allowing engineers to keep shrinking transistors without losing efficiency through leaking electricity.
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The new materials also mean the manufacturers won't have a problem continuing to etch transistors on chips at microscopic sizes, and more importantly, mass-produce them so they're affordable to PC users. In fact, Intel officials predict this breakthrough alone will ensure Moore's Law thrives "well into the next decade."
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Both Intel and AMD say they will use the technology to speed the transition from 65-nanometer chip-building architecture to 45-nm. Intel is due to start production of a new laptop dual-core microprocessor, a desktop dual-core and a quad-core, and server dual and quad-core processors in the second half of the year. It expects to ramp up to full production in three factories by the first half of 2008.

Jon "Hannibal" Stokes loves it when a plan comes together:

It's a shame that Intel happened to pick a Saturday when I'm trying to move to make major news with their upcoming 45nm process ... To complement this high-k dielectric, Intel has also moved to a metal gate electrode. This metal gate electrode is more compatible with the new hafnium-based dielectric than the polysilicon electrode used in previous process steps. The new 45nm process will be used for Intel's forthcoming Penryn microarchitecture, which is basically just a die shrink of Woodcrest with more cache.
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[In case you] need a refresher on the relationship between feature size, leakage current, power dissipation, and clockspeed ... I'm going to paste in a short discussion of power density from ... my book, Inside the Machine ...

Transistors leak more current as they get smaller, and consequently static power densities begin to rise across the chip when more transistors are crammed into the same amount of space. Thus even relatively low clockspeed devices with very small transistor sizes are still subject to increases in power density if leakage current is not controlled. If a silicon device's overall power density gets high enough, it will begin to overheat and will eventually fail entirely.

[Your humble blogwatcher is reading Jon's book -- seems like a fine tome, although you'll want to skip the first few chapters unless you need a 101-level introduction]

Robert Scoble took a video tour of Intel's new 45nm fab:

The 40-minute video I linked to earlier with a tour by Intel Senior Fellow Mark Bohr has lots of interesting facts ...

• a piece of hair is huge compared to a nanometer. A red blood cell is 5,000 nanometers big ...
• The new gate, above the dielectric ... is based on hafnium ...
• Transistors up to now were created using silicon dioxide. Hafnium-based Metal Gates are much harder to manufacture, which is why it took so long ...
• The modern chip has 200 to 300 million transistors. The first chip Intel made had only 2,000 transistors ...
• Mark says that leakage has been reduced by a factor of five to 10 times. Translation: your battery will last longer!

Intel's Josh Bancroft has, "The nerdy gritty details":

More than just another die shrink, the move to 45nm represents a breakthrough of a problem that has been limiting further progress towards smaller transistors in microprocessors: that is, previous materials started the lose the properties that made them work once they got smaller than a certain size ... chips based on the 45nm process will be faster, run cooler, and use less energy than the current generation of 65nm chips (a.k.a. Core 2 Duo). Prices should eventually come down, because it’s more efficient to make chips at 45nm (you can fit more onto a silicon wafer). It will also make it possible to fit more and more cores on a single chip, so the current Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors are only the beginning of multicore computing.

Aaron England:

This is a show of strength if you will, and an impressive one at that.

stevesliva:

I still view this as an evolutionary refinement of CMOS, and not as big as the transition from bipolar to CMOS for mainstream processors. It is a bigger deal than strained silicon.

brejc8:

Is this a major breakthrough? Yes and No. There are two improvements here which are happening at the same time. Process shrink (which happens all the time) and the use of High-K dielectric (which is something reather new in the mass manufacture field anyway)
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With static power now accounting for up to 50% of all power ... [a] >10x reduction in gate oxide leakage power ... is excellent.

Bender:

This is the first time since 1969 that a major modification to the MOSFET gate stack occured. In fact it is fairly major. I should remind you that this is a structure that is replicated around 1e19 times each year and is responsible for the biggest part of the 270 Billion US$ semiconductor market.

dreddnott:

It's also worth pointing out that both IBM and Intel announced this breakthough almost simultaneously, and AMD will reap the windfall benefits through its own partnership with IBM (they will move to the 0.45 process some time in 2008). AMD has also announced a low-K breakthrough that they will be implementing in their 0.65 process as well.

Buffer overflow:

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Previously in IT Blogwatch

• Unlocking new e-voting security horrors (and DIY laptop)
• Microsoft's Wikipedia PR blunder (and clean keys)
• Wi-Fi 802.11n now nearing acetic plunges (and don't try this at home)
• IBM/Lotus in the house of M. Mouse (and icy driving)
• Spam, spam, spam, spam (and big brothers)
• Older posts

And finally... Giraffe in my loft bonus link: Shilpa Shetty's best bits

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.