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Tech Valley News
IBM Announces Significant Chip Advancement
IBM announced the first-ever application of a breakthrough self-assembling nanotechnology to conventional chip manufacturing, borrowing a process from nature to build the next generation computer chips.
The natural pattern-creating process that forms seashells, snowflakes and enamel on teeth has been harnessed by IBM to form trillions of holes to create insulating vacuums around the miles of nano-scale wires packed next to each other inside each computer chip.
As a result, the new chips work 35 percent faster or consume 15 percent less energy than even the most advanced chips using conventional techniques.
The IBM patented self-assembly process moves a nanotechnology manufacturing method that had shown promise in laboratories into a commercial manufacturing environment for the first time.
Already a part of IBM's state-of-the-art manufacturing line in Tech Valley, the self-assembly process is expected to be in all the company’s chip production lines in 2009. The chips will be used in IBM's server product lines and for chips IBM builds for other companies. The technique was perfected for future commercial production at two Tech Valley research and development facilities, the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s (CNSE) Albany Nanotech complex at the University at Albany and at IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center in East Fishkill.
“It's a tremendous breakthrough," Richard Doherty, research director at Envisioneering Group, an analysis firm, told The Associated Press. “It's likely to save energy and increase chip speeds more than any other single advance in the last few years.”
Scientists at Albany NanoTech worked for several months on computer chip manufacturing equipment in the school's new clean room to perfect the use of “self assembly” in a commercial setting.
Although this new form of insulation is commonly referred to as “airgaps,” the gaps are really airless vacuum. Scientist see vacuum as the ultimate antidote for what is known as wiring capacitance. That occurs when two conductors, in this case adjacent wires on a chip, siphon electrical energy from one another, generating heat and slowing the data as it moves through a chip.
The technique used by IBM - a mix of special compounds to form a vacuum between the miles of copper wires on a chip – allows electrical signals to flow faster, while consuming less electrical power.
“This is the first time anyone has proven the ability to synthesize mass quantities of these self-assembled polymers and integrate them into an existing manufacturing process with great yield results,” said Dan Edelstein, IBM Fellow and chief scientist of the self- assembly airgap project. “By moving self assembly from the lab to the fab, we are able to make chips that are smaller, faster and consume less power than existing materials and design architectures allow.”
Until now, chip designers often battled capacitance by pushing ever more power through chips, but that creates other problems. What’s more, traditional insulators have become tenuously fragile as chip features get smaller and smaller, and they don’t insulate as well as a vacuum.
Self assembly is a concept scientists have been studying at IBM and in labs around the world as a potential technique to create materials useful for building computer chips. The concept occurs in nature every day, it is how enamel is formed on our teeth, the process that creates seashells and is what transforms water into complex snowflakes. The major difference is, while the processes that occur in nature are all unique, IBM has been able to direct the self-assembly process to form trillions of holes that are all similar.
CNSE is the first college in the world dedicated to research, development, education, and deployment in the emerging disciplines of nanoscience, nanoengineering, nanobioscience, and nanoeconomics. CNSE's Albany NanoTech complex is the most advanced research facility of its kind at any university in the world: a $3.5 billion, 450,000-square-foot complex that attracts corporate partners from around the world and offers students a one-of-a-kind academic experience. The UAlbany NanoCollege houses the only fully-integrated, 300mm wafer, computer chip pilot prototyping and demonstration line within 65,000 square feet of Class 1 capable cleanrooms.
More than 1,600 scientists, researchers, engineers, students, and faculty work on site at CNSE's Albany NanoTech complex, including IBM, AMD, SONY, Toshiba, Qimonda, Honeywell, ASML, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron and Freescale.
An expansion currently underway will increase the size of CNSE's Albany NanoTech complex to more than 750,000 square feet, including over 80,000 square feet of Class 1 cleanroom space, to house over 2,000 scientists, researchers, engineers, students, and faculty by the end of 2008.
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