Enhanced performance from smaller chips, promises AMD

By Alun Williams

Posted on 10 Sep 2002 at 12:33

While Intel holds court at its Developer Conference in San Jose, AMD has been trumpeting technical innovations of its own - the production of 10 nanometer double-gate transistors.

AMD is highlighting its research as the basis for a ten-fold performance leap for the transistors - the basic on/off switches within integrated circuits - that are the basic building blocks of microprocessors.

The breakthrough relates to the Fin Field Effect Transistor (FinFET) design, which AMD has now achieved on transistors one sixth of the size of the smallest currently in production. The 'fin effect' relates to a thin vertical 'fin' of silicon helping to control the leakage of current through a transistor when it is in an 'off' state.

'Transistor development is essential to the creation of higher-performing products for our customers,' states Craig Sander, AMD's VP of Technology Development, in the announcement of the research. 'The entire semiconductor industry is working to meet the increasing challenges of developing new transistor designs that are smaller and higher-performing and yet can be manufactured with minimal deviation from today's industry standard manufacturing processes. The FinFET transistor indicates we can continue to deliver very high performance products while preserving the basic technology infrastructure our industry relies upon.'

The announcement follows collaborative research between AMD and the University of California, Berkeley, along with support from the Semiconductor Research Corporation.