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Technology Stocks : George Gilder - Forbes ASAP -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SteveG who wrote (2151)	10/11/1999 7:36:00 AM
From: ekn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5853

Thanks for the response. Here is something interesting from INTEL Sunday October 10 12:29 AM ET Intel Scientist Sees Chip Size, Design Limits - NYT NEW YORK (Reuters) - After 30 years of progress in the quest to make cheaper and faster computers, an Intel researcher said scientists may have reached the limit of their ability to scale down a silicon transistor crucial to the technology revolution, The New York Times reported Saturday. Citing an article in the journal Science, the Times reported that Paul Packan, a scientist with Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, said semiconductor engineers have not found ways around basic physical limits beyond the generation of silicon chips that will begin to appear next year. Packan called the apparent impasse ''the most difficult challenge the semiconductor industry has ever faced.' ''These fundamental issues have not previously limited the scaling of transistors,' Packan wrote in the Sept. 24 issue of Science. ''There are currently no known solutions to these problems.' For more than 30 years, the computer industry has relied on a phenomenon known as Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, which was the basic force underlying the computer revolution and the rise of the Internet, the Times said. The law held that as transistors were scaled ever smaller -- doubling in capacity about every 18 months -- computer performance rose and the cost of computer technology dropped. It had been assumed that the progress would hold for at least another decade. Packan said the next step along Moore's Law's progression would be to develop transistors that are composed of fewer than 100 atoms -- beyond the ability of semiconductor engineers to control. Executives at Intel cautioned against seeing the problem as insurmountable, adding they were confident answers could be found. But Dennis Allison, a Silicon Valley physicist and computer designer, told the Times, ''The fact that this warning comes from Intel's process group is really significant. This says that they see actual limits.' If the miniaturization process for silicon-based transistors is halted, hopes for continued progress would have to be based on new materials, new transistor designs and advances like molecular computing, the Times reported. Packan's report will be echoed by researchers from the University of Glasgow in a paper to be presented in December at a conference in Washington, the Times reported. Here is a response from a poster on the subject--> Here's some good news for IRSN investors. For years IRSN chip stacking and 3-d interconnects have been behind the much cheaper and easier to implement technologies of single chip miniturization with concomitant increase in the number of transistors that can be placed on an individual die. Now Intel scientist claims that the limits of miniturization have have been reached with current technology. Let's see if IRSN can capitalize on this breather to begin to commercially introduce the speed and size technology which 3-d chip stacking can achieve and which IRSN has spent so much time developing. Wouldn't this be a good time to approach the big DRAM and microprocessor companies with a technology that can continue to increase speed of computing by using a different strategy, one that IRSN can develop for them?