I doubt that by the end of the day this means much, but a nice worthless bit of tech news to brighten your morning.....
IBM, AMD Speed Chips, Strain Wafers
Monday December 13, 12:03 am ET
By Daniel Sorid
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Researchers at IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD - News) have improved a chip-making technology called strained silicon, boosting semiconductor performance at a time when such gains are increasingly hard to come by, the companies said on Sunday.
Both companies said they will begin shipping microprocessors that use the technology, called dual-stress strained silicon, early next year. The advance costs little to install in factories and boosts transistor performance by about 12 percent, compared with current straining technologies, they said.
In the process, silicon is chemically stretched or strained, which improves the flow of electrons.
"We have succeeded in building a better mousetrap, but doing it by innovating with the conventional materials," said Nick Kepler, the vice president of logic technology development at AMD.
Chip makers have turned to more exotic materials and processes to keep up with Moore's Law, the industry tenet which holds that chip performance increases exponentially because the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months.
Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - News), Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE:TXN - News) and other leading chip makers have been straining and stretching silicon -- the principal material from which semiconductors are made -- for a few years, and found the technique speeds up transistors, the building blocks of chips, and reduces leakage of electrical current.
POTENTIAL BOON TO SUPPLIERS
The advance by International Business Machines Corp. and AMD is one of several improvements to straining under development by the industry. (Intel will describe its second generation of strained silicon technology in a paper to be released on Wednesday.)
The trend could become big business for suppliers of chip-manufacturing tools and chemicals, including Applied Materials Inc. (NasdaqNM:AMAT - News)
"We see it most definitely as a growing market," said Ken MacWilliams, the chief technology officer for thin films at Applied Materials.
AMD will introduce the technology into its most advanced manufacturing process in its Athlon 64 processors in the first quarter next year. The technology will also appear in the production of its two-chips-in-one, or dual-core, products to be released in mid-2005. IBM will include the strained silicon advance in its Power-based server processors in the first quarter of the year.
Details will be given at a Monday meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in San Francisco.
FRUITS OF A PARTNERSHIP
The advance comes out of AMD's partnership with IBM, which has allowed AMD to keep up with rival Intel in chip-making advances despite a much smaller research and development budget.
Japan's Sony Corp. (Tokyo:6758.T - News; NYSE:SNE - News) and Toshiba Corp. (Tokyo:6502.T - News), which also partner with IBM, will have the option of using the technology in the upcoming Cell processor to be used in the next-generation Sony PlayStation, IBM said.
Intel's developments in strained silicon, first disclosed two years ago, improve transistor performance by 10 percent to 25 percent while adding only 2 percent to manufacturing costs. Intel's Pentium 4 and Pentium M microprocessors use the technology.
Yet Intel's technology uses silicon germanium to strain part of the chip, adding complexity to the process, AMD's Kepler said.
"We agree that it is very effective to do, but it does involve adding new materials," Kepler said. "We don't feel that that at this point it's a manufacturable way."
IBM, AMD Speed Chips, Strain Wafers
Monday December 13, 12:03 am ET
By Daniel Sorid
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Researchers at IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD - News) have improved a chip-making technology called strained silicon, boosting semiconductor performance at a time when such gains are increasingly hard to come by, the companies said on Sunday.
Both companies said they will begin shipping microprocessors that use the technology, called dual-stress strained silicon, early next year. The advance costs little to install in factories and boosts transistor performance by about 12 percent, compared with current straining technologies, they said.
In the process, silicon is chemically stretched or strained, which improves the flow of electrons.
"We have succeeded in building a better mousetrap, but doing it by innovating with the conventional materials," said Nick Kepler, the vice president of logic technology development at AMD.
Chip makers have turned to more exotic materials and processes to keep up with Moore's Law, the industry tenet which holds that chip performance increases exponentially because the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months.
Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - News), Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE:TXN - News) and other leading chip makers have been straining and stretching silicon -- the principal material from which semiconductors are made -- for a few years, and found the technique speeds up transistors, the building blocks of chips, and reduces leakage of electrical current.
POTENTIAL BOON TO SUPPLIERS
The advance by International Business Machines Corp. and AMD is one of several improvements to straining under development by the industry. (Intel will describe its second generation of strained silicon technology in a paper to be released on Wednesday.)
The trend could become big business for suppliers of chip-manufacturing tools and chemicals, including Applied Materials Inc. (NasdaqNM:AMAT - News)
"We see it most definitely as a growing market," said Ken MacWilliams, the chief technology officer for thin films at Applied Materials.
AMD will introduce the technology into its most advanced manufacturing process in its Athlon 64 processors in the first quarter next year. The technology will also appear in the production of its two-chips-in-one, or dual-core, products to be released in mid-2005. IBM will include the strained silicon advance in its Power-based server processors in the first quarter of the year.
Details will be given at a Monday meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in San Francisco.
FRUITS OF A PARTNERSHIP
The advance comes out of AMD's partnership with IBM, which has allowed AMD to keep up with rival Intel in chip-making advances despite a much smaller research and development budget.
Japan's Sony Corp. (Tokyo:6758.T - News; NYSE:SNE - News) and Toshiba Corp. (Tokyo:6502.T - News), which also partner with IBM, will have the option of using the technology in the upcoming Cell processor to be used in the next-generation Sony PlayStation, IBM said.
Intel's developments in strained silicon, first disclosed two years ago, improve transistor performance by 10 percent to 25 percent while adding only 2 percent to manufacturing costs. Intel's Pentium 4 and Pentium M microprocessors use the technology.
Yet Intel's technology uses silicon germanium to strain part of the chip, adding complexity to the process, AMD's Kepler said.
"We agree that it is very effective to do, but it does involve adding new materials," Kepler said. "We don't feel that that at this point it's a manufacturable way."