HP scientists intend to announce they have created a new computer-chip design enabling an eightfold increase in the number of transistors on a chip, without making the transistors smaller.
January 16, 2007 (Press Release) --
For the past decade, a team of Hewlett-Packard computer scientists has been researching new ways to make elements of computer chips so small they are measured on the atomic scale. Their goal has been to boost chip performance at a pace that would continue the digital revolution that has put TV and music on our cell phones.
Today, HP scientists intend to announce they have created a new computer-chip design enabling an eightfold increase in the number of transistors on a chip, without making the transistors smaller.
The scientists said their advance would equal a leap of three generations of Moore's Law, a prediction formulated in 1964 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that forecast chip makers could double the number of transistors on a chip every couple of years.
"This is three generations of Moore's Law, without having to do all the research and development to shrink the transistors," said Stan Williams, a senior fellow at HP in Palo Alto. "If in some sense we can leapfrog three generations, that is something like five years of R&D. That is the potential of this breakthrough."
The scientists have published their work in the current issue of Nanotechnology, a publication of the British Institute of Physics. Nanotechnology is the study and engineering of materials so tiny they are measured at the level of atoms.
Wiring structure
The technology breakthrough developed by the HP scientists involves layering a structure, likened to chicken wire on top of a conventional silicon chip. By putting this nanowire cross bar above the silicon, the chip will have additional communication points, or gates and interconnects, for the circuits to move through. HP researchers were also able to remove most of the circuit wiring from the core silicon. Like a baker who puts cookies closer together on a cookie sheet to get more cookies from a batch, HP researchers removed the bulk of the wiring out of the chip's plane, getting more transistors on the chip.
"This is work that is directed toward solving a problem that we face in the long term," said Ivo Bolsens, chief technology officer of San Jose chip maker Xilinx, who is familiar with the work of Williams and his team.
Until now, chip makers have achieved performance gains by making the transistors smaller and smaller. But this technique, which had led to the doubling of transistors and performance gains, is running out of steam as the greater density of circuitry generates so much excess heat that it causes performance problems.
Big chip makers such as Intel of Santa Clara and Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale continue to shrink transistors, but they are also now developing multicore chips, with multiple brains on one piece of silicon, to provide a boost in performance.
"A multicore is an admission of failure," Williams said. HP is a computer and printer maker, but HP Labs does work in a wide range of areas relating to science and computing.
Williams said that if HP can prove its chip design works in manufacturing, this technique could provide a boost to the entire semiconductor industry.
"It's very likely that we will figure out how to make the intention of Moore's Law go on for several more decades instead of running out sometime in the next decade if things get too small," Williams said.
Intel is now manufacturing some of its cutting-edge microprocessors with a 45-nanometer process. This means that the line widths between its transistors averages about 45 nanometers. One nanometer is about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Prototype production
HP researchers plan to start manufacturing prototypes of their chip design later this year. They also said they expect to see a high rate of defects in the finished products, but that the greater amount of defects will be compensated for by the ability of the circuitry to quickly route around the failed circuits. The model for their chip design is based on a 45-nanometer chip, but with much smaller wiring in the chicken-wire crossbars of 4.5 nanometers.
"Hopefully, by the middle of this year, we will have a real working chip that we have run through an HP fab," Williams said. "Our goal is that by 2010, we will have something that we can give our customers to play with."
In 2010, the size of the crossbars would be about 15 nanometers. They are projected to reach the 4.5-nanometer size by about 2020.
Bolsens said the toughest test will be as HP tries to create a working chip. "There are a lot of challenges in making this in a manufacturing process," Bolsens said. "One challenge that you face in manufacturing is to guarantee that every unique chip is behaving the same as every other chip -- that is the challenge of manufacturing."
If HP succeeds with the chip, it is not clear yet if the company will make the chips for its own use, or license the design to other chip manufacturers. "There will be an interesting set of discussions around it," Williams said.
But heading to manufacturing, even with a prototype, is a huge coup for the HP team, which was formed 11 1/2 years ago by Williams. The team now has about 30 researchers.
"It's a major milestone for us," Williams said. "We are quite jazzed about it." He also noted that their work is only going to get tougher.
"Just because we have been able to make things work in the lab doesn't mean you are going to make a robust chip out of it," Williams said. "Now the real work begins."
Author: Therese Poletti
Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/
Today, HP scientists intend to announce they have created a new computer-chip design enabling an eightfold increase in the number of transistors on a chip, without making the transistors smaller.
The scientists said their advance would equal a leap of three generations of Moore's Law, a prediction formulated in 1964 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that forecast chip makers could double the number of transistors on a chip every couple of years.
"This is three generations of Moore's Law, without having to do all the research and development to shrink the transistors," said Stan Williams, a senior fellow at HP in Palo Alto. "If in some sense we can leapfrog three generations, that is something like five years of R&D. That is the potential of this breakthrough."
The scientists have published their work in the current issue of Nanotechnology, a publication of the British Institute of Physics. Nanotechnology is the study and engineering of materials so tiny they are measured at the level of atoms.
Wiring structure
The technology breakthrough developed by the HP scientists involves layering a structure, likened to chicken wire on top of a conventional silicon chip. By putting this nanowire cross bar above the silicon, the chip will have additional communication points, or gates and interconnects, for the circuits to move through. HP researchers were also able to remove most of the circuit wiring from the core silicon. Like a baker who puts cookies closer together on a cookie sheet to get more cookies from a batch, HP researchers removed the bulk of the wiring out of the chip's plane, getting more transistors on the chip.
"This is work that is directed toward solving a problem that we face in the long term," said Ivo Bolsens, chief technology officer of San Jose chip maker Xilinx, who is familiar with the work of Williams and his team.
Until now, chip makers have achieved performance gains by making the transistors smaller and smaller. But this technique, which had led to the doubling of transistors and performance gains, is running out of steam as the greater density of circuitry generates so much excess heat that it causes performance problems.
Big chip makers such as Intel of Santa Clara and Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale continue to shrink transistors, but they are also now developing multicore chips, with multiple brains on one piece of silicon, to provide a boost in performance.
"A multicore is an admission of failure," Williams said. HP is a computer and printer maker, but HP Labs does work in a wide range of areas relating to science and computing.
Williams said that if HP can prove its chip design works in manufacturing, this technique could provide a boost to the entire semiconductor industry.
"It's very likely that we will figure out how to make the intention of Moore's Law go on for several more decades instead of running out sometime in the next decade if things get too small," Williams said.
Intel is now manufacturing some of its cutting-edge microprocessors with a 45-nanometer process. This means that the line widths between its transistors averages about 45 nanometers. One nanometer is about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Prototype production
HP researchers plan to start manufacturing prototypes of their chip design later this year. They also said they expect to see a high rate of defects in the finished products, but that the greater amount of defects will be compensated for by the ability of the circuitry to quickly route around the failed circuits. The model for their chip design is based on a 45-nanometer chip, but with much smaller wiring in the chicken-wire crossbars of 4.5 nanometers.
"Hopefully, by the middle of this year, we will have a real working chip that we have run through an HP fab," Williams said. "Our goal is that by 2010, we will have something that we can give our customers to play with."
In 2010, the size of the crossbars would be about 15 nanometers. They are projected to reach the 4.5-nanometer size by about 2020.
Bolsens said the toughest test will be as HP tries to create a working chip. "There are a lot of challenges in making this in a manufacturing process," Bolsens said. "One challenge that you face in manufacturing is to guarantee that every unique chip is behaving the same as every other chip -- that is the challenge of manufacturing."
If HP succeeds with the chip, it is not clear yet if the company will make the chips for its own use, or license the design to other chip manufacturers. "There will be an interesting set of discussions around it," Williams said.
But heading to manufacturing, even with a prototype, is a huge coup for the HP team, which was formed 11 1/2 years ago by Williams. The team now has about 30 researchers.
"It's a major milestone for us," Williams said. "We are quite jazzed about it." He also noted that their work is only going to get tougher.
"Just because we have been able to make things work in the lab doesn't mean you are going to make a robust chip out of it," Williams said. "Now the real work begins."
Author: Therese Poletti
Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/
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