Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Breaking News -- Intel makes chip breakthrough

January 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Breaking News -- Intel makes chip breakthrough

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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 01:43 PM

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