New chip breakthrough

A significant milestone in developing next-generation chip manufacturing technology has been achieved by Intel Corporation. The company has built fully functional 70-megabit static random access memory (SRAM) chips with more than half a billion transistors using the world's most advanced 65 nanometer (nm) process technology. The achievement extends Intel's effort to drive the development of new manufacturing process technology every two years, in accordance with Moore's Law. The transistors in the new 65nm (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter) technology have gates (the switch that turns a transistor on and off) measuring 35nm, approximately 30 percent smaller than the gate lengths on the previous 90nm technology. For comparison, about 100 of these gates could fit inside the diameter of a human red blood cell. The new process technology increases the number of tiny transistors squeezed onto a single chip, giving Intel the foundation on which to deliver future multi-core processors, and to design innovative features into future products, including virtualization and security capabilities. Intel's new 65nm process technology also includes several unique power-saving and performance-enhancing features. Products featuring the new chips should be on sale next year, Intel said. The new device also allows Intel, the world's biggest maker of memory chips, to gain a march on its closest competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). AMD has just partnered with IBM to build a new chip factory in Dresden, Germany, BBC News reports.