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January 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Breaking News - Intel announces transistor breakthrough
Deemed no less an important event than to run as the major headline on Saturday morning's New York Times, "Intel says chips will run faster, using less power,"Intel has indeed made a major breakthrough in the manufacturing of chips.
The ability to create at production levels a transistor measuring 45 nanometers [nm]--400 such transistors could fit inside a single human red blood cell-- will mean extremely high compute power at extremely low power usage.
The new chips, expected to be in production by the second half of this year will find their way not only into the latest computer processors from Intel but also it is expected they will be used in cell phones and other handheld devices, according to Mark Bohr, an Intel Fellow.
While Intel spokespeople were reluctant to quantify how the new technology might improve performance and battery life, according to the Times using such chips would make it possible to play a full-length movie on a cell phone without recharging the battery.
The breakthrough was made possible by using a new material, "high-k" in the design of the chip that turn on and off the millions of transistors and in the insulating material beneath the transistors.
The material has one-tenth the power leakage of electrical current than previous processors. Leakage during the flow of electric current is one of the major contributors to loss of battery power.
The breakthorugh represents the first change in the material used to manufacture chips in 30 years, said Bohr.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on January 27, 2007 10:42 AM
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I think this is big news but it's not. This is distraction/diversion. I do understand how materials can make a difference in the operation of a technology but if a company can't quantify exactly how. This CANNOT be accepted a breakthrough. History has pages of so-called "breakthroughs" that were B.S.
Big Companies are highly motivated to increase share price...they'll even lie. Also, corporate marketing is always looking to find ways to make things "more sexy." We need to look past the hype and see what is real and "The cost" I'm not interested in 45 namometer transistors if it costs me 20,000 in bundles of 1,000.
Posted by: GeorgeC at January 28, 2007 11:44 AMTo George C and others
I believe your comment, "if a company can't quantify exactly how. This CANNOT be accepted [as] a breakthrough," is rash.
The article said these chips will use one-tenth the power and are about 20% faster. What Intel is reluctant to do is to interpret that into end user results because there are so many variables.
In other words they are giving us raw numbers but not the actual throughput if you will.
The article did not say but because the transistors leak less current this means you need less power to keep the transistors working, thus you can have more transistors which equals better performance.
But it is hard to quantify exactly how much. Nevertheless,the article in the N. Y. Times which I sited talks about watching a full-length movie on your cell phone. Perhaps, the Times got that information from an Intel executive in an unguarded moment.
As to your concern that the price will be high, again I believe you are wrong. While Intel is not really a consumer electronics company, they do market products in ever increasing volumes and have a long history of continually lowering prices as the volumes increase.
I see no reason why as these new chips become the standard the same model will not be followed.
-- Ephraim
A key point is that if this 45nm x86 processor can be used in a mobile phone and run a full windows xp.
The power consumption of an ARM processor is 1W in a mobile phone and 3 to 5W in a handheld device. The power consumption of an X86 in notebook is 35W. I am not sure if the new 45nm X86 processor can be in 3.5W.
Charlie
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