IBM, AMD & co move forward on the 32nm Posted on 10/12/2007 at 23:41 by Nicolas
- source: IBM
While Intel has been producing SRAM chips in 32nm since September, IBM and its partners AMD, Chartered Semiconductor, Freescale, Infineon and Samsung have announced an innovative approach to accelerate the implementation of an important material known as "high-k/metal gate" (not to be confused with Low-K fabrication technology which doesn’t involve transistors but rather interconnexions) in the next generation of 32nm chips.
This new "approach" will only be available in the second semester of 2009 and will therefore give AMD some time to concentrate on 45nm without High-K, contrary to Intel which already uses it for the Penryn. You may recall the creator of the Athlon is planning the use of metallic gate electrodes for this engraving width.
In the meantime, IBM and its partners have succeeded in producing 'high-k gate-first' SRAM 32nm cells with a size inferior to 0.15µm². A few figures were given according to tests carried out at the IBM factory located in East Fishkill, New York: the size of the chips is reduced 50% compared to the previous generation and 45% lower power consumption for performance gains as high as 30%
While Intel has been producing SRAM chips in 32nm since September, IBM and its partners AMD, Chartered Semiconductor, Freescale, Infineon and Samsung have announced an innovative approach to accelerate the implementation of an important material known as "high-k/metal gate" (not to be confused with Low-K fabrication technology which doesn’t involve transistors but rather interconnexions) in the next generation of 32nm chips.