<A> Texas Instruments Announces Research Breakthrough Paving the Way to Vastly More Powerful Computer Chips
DALLAS -- For the first time anywhere, researchers at Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) have demonstrated the successful combination of copper wiring with an insulating material called xerogel in an integrated circuit. This breakthrough approach to manufacturing chips will lead to future digital signal processors (DSP) and microprocessors that are at least 10 times faster and use much less power than today's most powerful chips. Leap-frogging previously announced developments about semiconductor technology using copper rather than aluminum for interconnecting transistors, this breakthrough of combining copper with an ultra low-k dielectric material like xerogel will offer the highest performance alternative for future generations of semiconductor chips within the next decade.
The prototype chips built by researchers at TI's Kilby Center laboratories offer a solution to one of the semiconductor industry's most important looming problems. As semiconductor manufacturers create smaller, more powerful chips with millions of transistors, manufacturing processes become increasingly complex. For the next generation of chips, these devices will be so small and so close together that the interconnects or wire connections between transistors can slow the flow of electrical signals between the wires. This problem severely degrades the performance of the chip.
The new TI technology offers a solution to the looming interconnect challenge and provides ten times the performance gain. The successful coupling of the two technologies (copper and xerogel) each new and radical in its own right, allows electrical signals to flow more freely throughout a chip, reducing troublesome electrical resistance and capacitance effects.
"Xerogel may be the ultimate solution because it has the lowest dielectric constant known other than air," said Robert Havemann, Manager of Advanced Interconnect Development at TI. Xerogel is a material made of microscopic glass bubbles containing air which is nature's ideal insulator. TI has shown it is now possible to integrate xerogel into copper interconnects--pushing the limits of Mother Nature," said Havemann.
"Much attention has been paid recently to the use of copper wires in integrated circuits," added Havemann. "While lowering the resistance with copper solves a near-term problem, we think reducing the capacitance effect is even more of a critical issue because unless the problem is solved, chip performance, power and operating voltage will ultimately be limited by the interconnect. That's counter to everything the market expects from future semiconductor products."
The process advance made today is important because it translates directly into smaller, faster and more powerful chips that will operate at frequencies of billions of cycles per second. Furthermore, chips using the breakthrough interconnect technology will be vastly more reliable and energy efficient. Improved energy efficiency and computing power are enablers for new generations of portable electronics such as cellular phones, notebook computers, personal communicators and video watches.
Future generation microprocessors and DSPs using this breakthrough will be the size of a fingernail and incorporate circuitry as small as 0.10 micron with over 500 million transistors.
Electrons on this small chip will travel along one mile of wiring separated by the xerogel insulator which provides insurance that the chip will not fail. To understand the interconnect challenge involved with this technology, imagine electrons as a steady stream of cars, traveling 60,000 miles per hour, passing within an arm's length along millions of miles of city streets -- all accident free.
TI is an industry leader in the development of low-k dielectrics and was one of the first to use low-k materials in the mass production of semiconductor chips. In 1995, TI teamed with Nanopore, Inc., to win a prestigious National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Technology Program for the application of xerogel materials into integrated circuits.
TI researchers will present more details about this technology disclosure on Wednesday, December 10, at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in Washington DC. The IEDM is one of the world's leading semiconductor technology conferences.
Texas Instruments Incorporated is a global semiconductor company and the world's leading designer and supplier of digital signal processing solutions, the engines driving the digitization of electronics.
Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the company's businesses also include calculators, productivity products, controls and sensors, metallurgical materials and digital light- processing technologies. The company has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at ti.com. |
