Intel announced game changing, record-setting innovation in transistor technology last week comprising of two new materials used in making transistors: high-k and Metal gates. How big is this innovation? This 45nm technology represents the biggest technological change and creativity in 40 years, extends Moore's Law into the next decade, and increases Intel's lead by more than a year over the rest of the semiconductor industry with working 45nm processors codenamed "Penryn".Background
According to Moore's law, the number of transistors on a chip roughly doubles every two years - this does not just happen by itself. Intel methodically and rigorously innovates and integrates, "adding more features and computing processing cores, increasing performance, and decreasing manufacturing costs and cost per transistor." Intel creates new technology that shrinks transistors to ever-smaller sizes. However, using current materials, the ability to shrink transistors reached fundamental limits because of increased power and heat issues that develop as feature sizes reach atomic levels. Hence, Intel sought to implement new materials for this killer innovation.
Gordon Moore
Intel co-founder and creative leader Gordon Moore made a comeback and told the world: "The implementation of high-k and metal materials marks the biggest change in transistor technology since the introduction of polysilicon gate MOS transistors in the late 1960s." It should be noted that Moore has not made public statements on behalf of Intel for the past several years, especially as it alludes to transistor technology. For Moore to come out of retirement and essentially state that this is the biggest change since the late 1960s makes this innovation significant.
Disruptive Innovation
"Transistor gate leakage associated with the ever-thinning Silicon Dioxide gate dielectric is recognized by the industry as one of the most formidable technical challenges facing Moore's Law. To solve this critical issue, Intel replaced the silicon dioxide with a thicker hafnium-based high-k material in the gate dielectric, reducing leakage by more than 10 times compared to the silicon dioxide used for more than four decades.
Because the high-k gate dielectric is not compatible with today's silicon gate electrode, the second part of Intel's 45nm transistor material recipe is the development of new metal gate materials. While the specific metals that Intel uses remains secret, the company will use a combination of different metal materials for the transistor gate electrodes."
Key Product Benefits
What are the key product benefits of 45nm technology over today's 65nm technology?
- Approximately twice the transistor density (great for smaller chip sizes or increased transistor counts)
- Approximately 30 percent reduction in transistor-switching power
- Greater than 20 percent improvement in transistor-switching speed or a greater than 5 times reduction in source-drain leakage power
- Greater than 10 times reduction in transistor gate oxide leakage for lower power requirements and increased battery life
- Increased computing performance by up to 20%
Mark Bohr, Intel senior fellow states: "Meanwhile our engineers and designers have achieved a remarkable accomplishment that ensures the leadership of Intel products and innovation. Our implementation of novel high-k and metal gate transistors for our 45nm process technology will help Intel deliver even faster, more energy efficient multi-core products that build upon our successful Intel Core 2 and Xeon family of processors, and extend Moore's Law well into the next decade."
Penryn - The new Intel processors
According to Intel, the new Penryn family of processors will be based on the new process technology and new microarchitecture. The combination of Intel's leading 45nm process technology, high-volume manufacturing capabilities, and leading microarchitecture design enabled Intel to develop its first working 45nm Penryn processors.
Intel announced that there are more than 15 products based on 45nm in development across desktop, mobile, workstation and enterprise segments. With more than 400 million transistors for dual-core processors and more than 800 million for quad-core, the Penryn family of 45nm processors includes new microarchitecture features for greater performance and power management capabilities, as well as higher core speeds and up to 12 megabytes of cache. The Penryn family designs also bring approximately 50 new Intel SSE4 instructions that expand capabilities and performance for media and high-performance computing applications.
Bottomline
Intel become the world's number one microprocessor and semiconductor company decades ago, and has remained in the leadership position in the microprocessor market ever since. However, AMD has been recently disrupting Intel's market share, gaining market share and taking market share away from Intel. Can Intel stall AMD with the new Penryn and 45 nm technology? Can Intel create the new Penryn using efficient manufacturing yield and economical prices? Can Intel regain the market share from AMD and reverse the tide?
Would consumers and businesses crave for the extra power, extra performance, and better efficiencies that Penryn and the new 45 nm technology offers? This would depend heavily on the adoption of new media such as on demand video, audio, multimedia, and the transformation of the Internet and Information from static to dynamic, multimedia, compute intensive applications. As more consumers embrace YouTube, Flickr, Myspace, on demand media, images, animations, home entertainment centers powered by computers and faster processors, better operating systems such as the new Windows Vista, Apple iPod + iTunes and MP3 music and on demand video, Apple iMac computers powered by Intel processors, Dell computers, HP computers, and users all over the world purchasing computers with Intel processors – Intel is sure to benefit. One thing is certain: Intel has created a game changing innovation, and is planning to ship Penryn processors based on this innovation in the second half of 2007.
Intel is The Innovator of the week.
References:
www.intel.com
Intel Press Release
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