Intel digs chips off a new block

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 6 Nov 2003 at 15:09

Intel has developed new materials to take transistors to new levels of miniaturisation and speed.

Researchers in Intel's labs have produced a high resistance 'dialectric' they call high-k that insulates against current leakage more than one hundred times better than the current silicon solution. And as the standard transistor gates won't work with the new material, they have also successfully developed a metal gate to resolve this.

Intel's silicon-based manufacturing processes are moving to 90nm toward the end of this year, but the process is expected to near a barrier beyond 45nm, which the company is predicting it will reach in 2007. That is when it is planning the switch to making the transistors for its processors from the new materials.

A spokesperson for the company told us that by 2011, processors using transistors in the region of 22nm in size will be in volume production. The gates for these transistors will be just 11nm across - just 25 atomic layers.

The spokesperson wouldn't put a figure on how fast such chips could be clocked, but said that other Intel research projects, such as strained silicon and carbon nano-tubes would be brought to bear on eeking out chip performance and combatting inefficiencies of heat and current.