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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quidditch who wrote (1157)	11/29/1999 12:04:00 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 12232

OT....... Smallest Transistor Ever Breakthrough Helps Computers Shrink B E R K E L E Y, Calif., Nov. 23 ? A new semiconductor transistor so small that a single computer chip can hold 400 times more of the devices than before could help lead to significantly faster and cheaper chip technology, scientists say. Chenming Hu, a professor electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, said the tiny transistor was much smaller than any other ever developed. ?It?s a new world record,? Hu said of the prototype, dubbed ?FinFET?. Details of the invention, which was funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, will be unveiled next month at the International Electronic Devices Meeting in Washington. The Berkeley breakthrough, announced Monday in a news release, changed the design of the ?gate?, or switch, on the transistor which controls the flow of electric current in electronic devices. Bridging the Passage While previously this gate was a flat conductor that controlled only one side of the passage through which the current flows, the Berkeley team has redesigned it as a fork-shaped prong straddling both sides of the passage. This gives much better control and reduced current leakage, meaning the transistor can be made much smaller. Hu said the FinFET?s gate is 18 nanometers long, or about the width of 100 atoms. While far too small to be viewed by the naked eye, it is visible through a scanning electron microscope. Hu said it was already about 10 times shorter than the standard semiconductor transistor now used by the industry. And he hoped to cut the FinFET?s length by another half in future. Electronics ?Growth? Extended The new transistor could help extend the success of the electronics industry, which has profited by making transistors ever smaller over the past three decades and delivering cheaper, better and faster computer ?brains? for electronic products. Chip engineers have long held that the number of transistors on a chip will double every 18 months. But scientists believed that the laws of physics were going to stop that progress soon ? unless a design breakthrough like that proposed by Hu proves practical. Hu said the FinFET prototype was successfully fabricated last July and appeared to perform well. He said no patent had been taken out on the device. ?We made the decision not to patent,? Hu said. ?We want the widest possible usage. We hope this becomes a mainstream transistor structure in the future.?