Before I even started this new topic I wondered: 'Don't we have tonnes of topics in here and maybe we could reduce it to Intel, AMD, ARM, (soon to be Nvidia) to better place articles like this... either way this is an Intel win and it's pretty damn cool. As the topic suggests, Intel after a decade of research has figured out how to build transistors with even more 'depth' than previous layering approaches. Warning the articles out there can my mind numbingly technical, however Ars has a nice simplified version and more importantly what it means for the future of microprocessors. Here's an excerpt:
Transistors go 3D as Intel re-invents the microchip
By Jon Stokes | Last updated: about 5 hours ago
At an event today in San Francisco, Intel announced one of the most important pieces of semiconductor news in many years: the company's upcoming 22nm processors will feature a fundamental change to the design of the most basic building block of every computer chip, the transistor.
Intel has been exploring the new transistor for over a decade, and the company first announced a significant breakthrough with the design in 2002. A trickle of announcements followed over the years, as the new transistor progressed from being one possible direction among many to its newly crowned status as the official future of Intel's entire product line.
In this short article, I'll give my best stab at explaining what Intel has announced—the so-called tri-gate transistor. Semiconductor physics are not my strong suit, so corrections/clarifications/comments are welcome. Also, this explanation focuses solely on the "3D" part of today's announcements. Other features of the 22nm process, like high-K dielectrics and such, are ignored. (So if you see a funny term on a slide and you don't know what it means, either ignore it or hit one of the Related Links for more info.)
But before we dive into what's new about Intel's transistor design, we first have to review how traditional transistors work.
In effect without going deeper into the article, they found a way to increase conductivity/ or reduce power consumption. Read the article:
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/05/intel-re-invents-the-microchip.ars/ to get a better understanding. And note, this new development is OUTSIDE of simple traditional shrink the process to improve speed and power. This is a complimentary discovery that will add up to 50% power savings or 30%+ frequencies ABOVE the process shrinks. Study dat.
