Intel & IBM: Breakthrough in Chip Technology

Yesterday, in separate announcements, Intel Corp. and IBM detailed major breakthrough in transistor technology in nearly four decades. The breakthrough, achieved via separate research efforts, involves using a new exotic material to make smaller transistors. At the transistor level, the use of basic materials never changed since the 1960s and without a breakthrough, the Moore's Law (that the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years) was coming to a grinding halt.

Exactly one year after Intel originally disclosed the initial details of its 45-nm process and claimed it had produced the world's first chips based on the technology, the company yesterday announced, in more detail, that it has implemented high-k dielectrics and metal gates for the technology. Intel will use the technology, based on a silvery metal called hafnium, in new processors coming out later this year.

The company claims to be one of the first chip makers to implement these new materials in its process technology. Using an undisclosed thick hafnium-based material for its high-k films in gate-stack applications, Intel claims that it is able to boost the overall performance, while also reducing transistor leakage by more than 10 times over current silicon dioxide technology. Intel's 45-nm process, dubbed P1266, is said to incorporate copper interconnects, low-k dielectrics, strained silicon and other features.

The high-k and metal gate substitutes a new material into a critical portion of the transistor that controls its primary on/off switching function. The material provides superior electrical properties compared to its predecessor, enhancing the transistor's function while also allowing the size of the transistor to be shrunk beyond limits being reached today. The technology can be incorporated into existing chip manufacturing lines with minimal changes to tooling and processes, making it economically viable.

According to Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore,''The implementation of high-k and metal materials marks the biggest change in transistor technology since the introduction of polysilicon gate MOS transistors in the late 1960s". In the same statement, Mark Bohr, Intel senior fellow, said ''''As more and more transistors are packed onto a single piece of silicon, the industry continues to research current leakage reduction solutions. Our implementation of novel high-k and metal gate transistors for our 45-nm process technology will help Intel deliver even faster, more energy efficient multi-core products that build upon our successful Intel Core 2 and Xeon family of processors, and extend Moore's Law well into the next decade.''

Elsewhere, IBM Corp. also claimed that it has developed the long-awaited improvements to transistor technology: high-k dielectrics and metal gates for use in logic chips, working in collaboration with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and its other development partners, Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. IBM has found a way to construct a critical part of the transistor with a new high-k/metal gate material, clearing a path toward chip circuitry that is smaller, faster and more power-efficient than previously possible.

IBM has inserted the technology into its state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing line in East Fishkill, N.Y. and will apply it to products with chip circuits as small as 45-nm starting in 2008.

The benefits of the new technique announced by these two world leaders may bring revolution in chip industry. Transistors can be made smaller, potentially doubling the total number in a given area and their speed can be increased by more than 20%, or power leakage can be cut by 80% or more and can effectively cater to the growing trend in consumers to go for more mobility and power-efficient solutions.

Of course, plenty of challenges lie ahead in keeping Moore's Law on track in future years. For example, it is becoming harder to make beams of light narrow enough to etch circuitry on chips. But that's the way the technology progresses. Two years back, the chip industry was not confident enough to chart the future course of the technology and now they have found a great solution and certainly earned some 'happyness' to live with for some more time.

eCoupled Technology

Photo: An eCoupled intelligent wireless power prototype developed by Fulton Innovation charges popular consumer electronic devices wirelessly without the use of cords or device-specific chargers.

Adapters...Adapters ...everywhere!! Power cords and chargers have been the bane of consumer devices for years, with bulky cords and cables contributing to office and home clutter and presenting a potential safety hazard. Now, help is on the way.

At the International Consumer Electronics Show, recently concluded in Las Vegas, Fulton Innovation (a member of the Alticor family of corporations) introduced a way to charge wireless devices with its eCoupled technology, which allows for the transmission of power and data without the need for cords and ports.

The eCoupled technology transfers energy from one device to another through a shared magnetic field. The user places the device in a wireless charger, which verifies whether the device is close enough to be charged. Then the power is transferred by electromagnetic induction from the charging surface to the user's device. The technology stems from the foundational work of renowned scientists Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla.

Most of the common consumer electronic devices such as cellular phones, digital music players and PDAs can be charged this way. Fulton Innovation's intelligent inductive power technology overcomes historic limitations of inductive coupling by using resonance-seeking circuitry that dynamically seeks and optimizes power transfer under multiple, varying load conditions and spatial configurations. To overcome the limitation, the eCoupled technology features a feedback and control system that will correspond with individual devices in real time, enabling the technology to determine the power needs of the particular wireless device as well as the age and charging habits of the battery. This will help the technology to deliver the right amount of power to keep a device at high efficiency, the company said.

Products that will use eCoupled technology are scheduled to be brought to market in 2007. Leading manufacturers of consumer devices have adopted Fulton Innovation's eCoupled technology as the de facto standard for wireless power.

Light Transmitted Through Nanocable

Boston College scientists (L-R) Krzysztof Kempa, Michael Naughton, Jakub Rybczynski and Zhifeng Ren have transmitted visible light through a "nanocoax" cable they developed that is hundreds of times thinner than a human hair [photo courtsey: Boston College]

A team of scientists from Boston College have created the first nanoscale coaxial cables that can transmit visible light. Operating much like the coaxial cables used to distribute television and radio signals, these cables can transmit light with wavelengths nearly 4 times their 200 nm diameter. This discovery defies a key principle that says light cannot pass through a hole much smaller than its wavelength.

This achievement is built upon thir earlier (year 2004) invention of a microscopic antenna that captures visible light in much the same way radio antennae capture radio waves. This time they developed a "nanocoax" -- a carbon nanotube-based coaxial cable with a diameter of about 300 nm (a human hair is several hunderd times wider). The nanocoax is designed in a way such that the center wire protruded at one end, forming a light antenna. The other end was blunt, allowing measurement of the light received by the antenna and transmitted through the medium. The researchers were able to transmit both red and green light into the nanocoax and out the other end, indicating that the cable can carry a broad spectrum of visible light.

Their coaxial cable is based around a carbon nanotube, which forms the central conductor and is surrounded by a concentric ring of transparent aluminium oxide -- which acts as the dielectric layer – and finally a concentric conducting metal ring that acts as the outer conductor. This structure is able to enclose energy and let the cable transmit electromagnetic signals with wavelengths much larger than the diameter of the cable itself.

The researchers claim that the ability to control light over sub-wavelength distances could lead to better optical microscopes, smaller computer chips and more efficient solar panels. It may open the door to a wide array of new technologies, from high-efficiency, inexpensive solar cells to microscopic light-based switching devices for use in optical computing. The technology could even be used to help some blind people see through the creation of artificial retinas.

Reference: "Subwavelength waveguide for visible light",
Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 021104 (January 8th issue, 2007) Link to Abstract
Authors: J. Rybczynski, K. Kempa, A. Herczynski, Y. Wang, M. J. Naughton, and Z. F. Ren of Dept of Physics, Boston College, MA; Z. P. Huang and D. Cai of NanoLab Inc., Newton, MA; M. Giersig of Center of Advanced European Studies and Research (CAESAR), Bonn, Germany.