IBM unveils chips made with nanotechnology
By John Shinal, MarketWatch - Last Update: 12:01 AM ET May 3, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- International Business Machines Corp. said it has used a nanotechnology process to make computer chips for the first time in a production setting, advancing the race to boost the power and energy efficiency of semiconductors.
The technology giant said it completed a successful demonstration of the process in a run at its East Fishkill, N.Y., chip fabrication plant, and plans to use the method, known as self-assembly, in commercial-scale, server-chip production lines by 2009.
While the performance improvement in the chips is "evolutionary," IBM research fellow Dan Edelstein says "the way we built them was revolutionary."
"We invented these molecules" used in the process, said Edelstein, who led the research team that has worked on the project for seven years.
The breakthrough may help IBM better compete for chip customers. Early in 2006, the company saw Intel Corp. win away the contract to supply Apple Inc. with microprocessors for its desktop and laptop products.
The challenge of chip design
Microprocessors are composed of tiny copper electrical wires running over and through silicon chips.
The wires serve as transistors, which generate heat as they turn on and off executing binary computing instructions, and together form an integrated circuit. The silicon, meanwhile, helps conduct the heat away from the wires.
The challenge to generate less heat and draw it away from the copper wires more efficiently has been a major research focus at IBM. (IBM : International Business Machines IBM 102.33, +0.11, +0.1% ) and rival chip makers such as Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. for more than a decade.
That challenge has gotten tougher as companies make ever more-powerful chips by piling on more wires.
Now, with nanotechnology the use of tools to manipulate materials at the level of individual atoms or molecules IBM has pioneered a new way to conduct heat away from the wire transistors.
More power, less energy
In the new method, IBM researchers coated a mixture of two polymers over the top of a silicon wafer. The two types of molecules in the coating, which were created from scratch by the scientists using component chemicals, then assembled themselves into a thin film pocked with evenly-spaced holes that contain no air.
These vacuum spaces, sized 20 nanometers across and spaced 40 nanometers apart, act like molecule-sized versions of the vacuum tubes that once helped insulate mainframe computers and televisions.
Because transistors in self-assembled chips can carry electricity 35% faster than those in traditional silicon, they will have 10% to 15% better processing power than IBM's current line of server chips while using 10% to 15% less power, Edelstein said.
The self-assembly process is used in nature to make seashells, tooth enamel and snowflakes, he said.
The nanotechnology breakthrough builds on other IBM research, including the development of copper-wire chip-making technology by Edelstein's team a decade ago and a seminal experiment in nanotechnology by a team at the company's Almaden research center in San Jose, Calif.
In that experiment, IBM researcher Don Eigler used the positive and negative charges inherent in protons and electrons of 35 Xenon atoms to line them up on a microscopic nickel plate. When Eigler was finished, the atoms spelled out the letters "I B M."
Limits to 'Moore's Law
IBM, working with AMD, and Intel earlier this year separately unveiled chips that use what are known as High-k metal gate transistors, which reduce heat leakage. Chips using that material are 10% to 15% more powerful than previous chips while using the same amount of power, Intel has said.
Intel (INTC : Intel Corporation Last: 22.10+0.28+1.29% INTC 22.10, +0.28, +1.3% ) and AMD (AMD : Advanced Micro Devices, Inc Last: 13.84+0.21+1.54% 9:54am 05/03/2007 AMD 13.84, +0.21, +1.5% ) have been boosting the power of their server chips by doubling the number of microprocessors on each semiconductor.
All these advances have helped the chip industry keep pace with Moore's Law, named for Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who successfully predicted decades ago that the power of computer chips can be doubled every two years.
As transistor wires on the chips keep getting thinner and closer together, some industry observers have begun to predict that Moore's Law will begin to bump up against physical boundaries, and that nanotechnology processes will be needed to advance chip performance at that same pace.
John Shinal is the technology editor of MarketWatch in San Francisco.
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