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"By next year, we will be the first company to have a 90 nanometre process in volume manufacturing," said Mark Bohr, Intel's director of process architecture and integration.
Intel details new technology for cheaper chips
AMSTERDAM, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Intel Corp (NasdaqNM:INTC - News) unveiled details on Tuesday of its plan to produce the next generation of tiny transistors, which it claims will make its chips faster, cheaper and more energy efficient. ADVERTISEMENT
Shrinking transistors, which perform the calculations on a processor, makes them faster, more energy efficient and relatively cheaper to make because more fit on a single wafer.
Intel detailed several of the latest production technologies that it will use to move to large volume manufacturing of chips based on 90 nanometre circuitry technology by the second half of 2003.
The chip-maker currently produces most of its microprocessors with 130 nanometre technology -- a nanometre being one-billionth of a metre.
The company says its new process can create transistors whose key features are just 50 nanometres, or 1/2,000th of the width of a human hair.
Chip miniaturisation has been the driving force of Moore's Law, the observation of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, which for the last 30 years has accurately predicted that the available computing power for one dollar doubles every eighteen months.
"By next year, we will be the first company to have a 90 nanometre process in volume manufacturing," said Mark Bohr, Intel's director of process architecture and integration.
"This new process combines higher-performance, lower-power transistors, strained silicon, high-speed copper interconnects and a new low-k dielectric material," Intel said in a statement.
"This is the first time all of these technologies will be integrated into a single manufacturing process," it added.
Besides shrinking the circuitry on their chips, Intel is also seeking to combine multiple features such as memory and wireless networking on the same chip with microprocessors, making Intel a more credible contender in communications and other markets beyond personal computers. |
