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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer who wrote (41627)	11/17/1998 12:59:00 AM
From: Maxwell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575422

Elmer: <<If chilling a processor has no affect on reliability then why don't AMD and Intel do it? This is a serious question. I must assume the answer is that it is a reliability problem regardless of what previous posters claim. I don't know for sure because this is not my area of expertise. I do know that if it was a no-brainer then Intel and AMD would be doing it. Isn't electromigration a function of frequency?>> There are two main effects which cause reliability failure. First is the electromigration and second is HCI (hot carrier injection). Electromigration is caused by flow of electrical current which tends to pull the metal lines apart. The effect is increased at higher temperature and current density. Frequency is not so important. Second is hot carrier injection. When elecrons are flowing from source to drain some of these electrons tend to get trapped in the gate oxide. When the amount of charge increased beyond a certain threshold the transistor doesn't even turn on or off. HCI gets worse at higher temperature and higher drive current. Cryo-cooling improves reliability because you reduce the operating temperature of the chip or junction temperature. This will reduce electromigration and HCI. If it is so cool then why AMD and Intel don't do it? Because it is not cost feasible. It is expensive and I would not want a noisy compressor sitting on my table. It is good for servers because it demands the highest performance and can be located at remote place. Maxwell