AMD to unveil double-gate transistors

SUNNYVALE, California: Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said on Tuesday it had shrunk key elements of the semiconductor, a development that could lead to a chip with 1 billion transistors. Transistors are the tiny switches that are the basic element of a microprocessor and, when they are flipped on and off in a rapid series of sequences, give a chip its computational power. Microprocessors are the brains that run personal computers.

AMD, based in Sunnyvale, California, said that it had manufactured the smallest double-gate transistors to date using industry-standard technology. The gate of the transistor, across which electrical current flows to turn the switch on, measures 10 nanometers, or 10 billionths of a meter. AMD, chief rival to No. 1 Intel Corp. in the market for microprocessors, said that the tiny double-gate transistors could mean that a chip that now holds 100 million transistors could hold about a billion of the tiny transistors. A double-gate transistor effectively doubles the electrical current that can be passed through it.

"The entire semiconductor industry is working to meet the increasing challenges of developing new transistor designs that are smaller and higher-performing and yet can be manufactured with minimal deviation from today's industry standard manufacturing processes," said Craig Sander, AMD's vice president of Technology Development, in a statement.

For its part, Intel plans to detail its development and manufacture of triple-gate transistors in a paper it is delivering at a technical conference next week in Japan, Intel President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini told an Intel conference on Monday. Intel also said it is already developing a processor for server computers that will have about a billion transistors.

Double- and triple- gate transistors are analogous to erecting a building with many floors, rather than achieving the same square footage by building many one-story buildings over more ground. AMD said its laboratory demonstration of 10 nanometer Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor Fin Field Effect Transistor (CMOS FinFET) is the outcome of collaborative research between AMD and the University of California, Berkeley with support from the Semiconductor Research Corporation. The devices were fabricated in AMD's Submicron Development Center.

AMD and the University of California will present the paper, titled "FinFET Scaling to 10 nm Gate Length" at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Francisco, December 9-11.

© Reuters