News Intel tooling up for 14nm transistors

[Claave]

CEO Paul Otellini has said that Intel has ‘line-of-sight’ on 14nm transistor technology.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...-transistors/1

[jcb121]

so in 14nm, how many transistors could i swallow at once?

[MrGumby]

Reminds me of a cpc article years ago, regarding future chip design. Think we we at 65nm at the time and mentioned 45nm and 32nm. Its fun to go back and re-read these articles and see how close some predictions were.

[Action_Parsnip]

I have a feeling 22nm will be around for alot longer than they hope it will be. The pace of change has already slowed down some.

[sstteevveenn]

utmost

[SpAceman]

I'm sure I had heard that 15nm was next.... This is even better!

I found an old PC at work the other day that was hidden in the corner of the IT department (2 desks in the corner) and booted it up to find Win2K and a 130nm Athlon XP. Its amazing how far we have come with transistor technology.

[fluxtatic]

Originally Posted by jcb121

so in 14nm, how many transistors could i swallow at once?

Even at 32nm, as I recall, aren't there Nvidia GPUs with just over a billion already? So, if you don't mind a little scratching on the way down, say, 2.25 bn?

[Anneon]

Originally Posted by fluxtatic

Even at 32nm, as I recall, aren't there Nvidia GPUs with just over a billion already? So, if you don't mind a little scratching on the way down, say, 2.25 bn?

Assuming you dont want to risk choking on your bite of silicon goodness I would assume you would want a bite of around a 2cm sphere. Therefore giving you a bit more at 2.99 billion. Let me know how that works out or you please.

[Xir]

Hmmm, not very nutricious but...be my guest.

[l3v1ck]

Can someone just remine me how wide a single layer of atoms is?
How low can they theortically go?

[azazel1024]

It depends on the atoms. IIRC at 14nm there is something around 30 atoms composing the width of the transistor. Now this varies depending on the atomic composition as some molecules have bonds that are larger and some smaller.

As it is we are rapidly getting to the point where transistors litterally can't get smaller because they are single atoms. Now really that is a decade + away even if the current pace on miniturization keeps up, but we are getting there in my life time if we don't hit some kind of quantum barrier before then.

I think at some point, I don't know when, but I'd guess in the 6-10nm range making the transistors smaller is going to produce almost no benifit and that we are going to need to focus more on making them switch faster and more efficient. Could be when hybrid electrooptical circuits are needed, or even all optical.

[rickysio]

There's also quantum tunnelling mucking things up at scales that small.

[thehippoz]

go intel =]

[Bluephoenix]

Originally Posted by l3v1ck

Can someone just remine me how wide a single layer of atoms is?
How low can they theortically go?

based on the scientific articles about very early research on carbon nanotube transistors, if that technology were to be made workable it would be near electrically perfect and about 3nm in width.

so quite small, but almost there!

[Xir]

Originally Posted by rickysio

There's also quantum tunnelling mucking things up at scales that small.

That's already beeing used really
Switching voltages for Transistors are effectively lower than they shoud be in theory
Remember we're talking structure width here...structure thickness has reached the level of one-atom-less-and-it-won't-work-anymore a couple of years ago

Gate oxide thickness has been under 10A for ...gee, half a decade at least?

[leeds_manc]

I'll let my four year old PC off then, relative to this, it's made from transistors the size of breezeblocks. I wonder though if 22nm will prove to be the sweet spot for speed and reliability, with 14/11nm being iPhone/iPad 17 only?