Moore’s Law on Course

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Did you know that ‘Moore’s Law which postulated that the number of transistors on a chip will roughly double every 18 to 24 months, faced a major barrier- power leakage? Not anymore. By the use of materials termed “high-k”, IBM and Intel have said in early 2007 that they have set Moore’s law valid for atleast 6 years. The development means continued shrinking of computer chips.

The new Intel processors, codenamed Penryn, will pack more than four hundred million transistors into a chip half the size of a postage stamp. Processors will have transistors with features just 45 nanometres (billionth of a metre) wide, having broken the 65 nanometres roadblock.

Moore’s theory has held true until the 1990s, when chip producers started to make a hard choice between energy efficiency and cost. To be cost effective, it was observed that more transistors a chip contained power leakage escalated. Past 65nm the silicon used to manufacture critical switch element, known as gate dielectrics, no longer performs as it does at larger scales. As a result, currents passing through the transistors leak and reduce the effectiveness of the chip. As computer chips have grown smaller and more compact, chip designers and manufacturers had feared that the increased cost and lack of energy efficiency would mean the end of
Moore’s Law.

The Remedy:

The new Intel and IBM designs are both based on the use of a metallic material known as “high-K.” To prevent power leakage, researchers have had to develop new materials to contain the current at very small scales (45 nm) based on the metal hafnium. The silicon substitutes are known as high-k materials. High-K refers to their greater ability to store electrical charge compared with silicon. The new metal will be used to build transistor gate dielectrics. Transistors are the tiny switches that are used to sort out the series of ones and zeros that are the foundation of modern computers. The gate shuts the transistor on and off and the gate dielectric, underneath the gate, insulates it by separating it from the channel where current flows.Unlike silicon, the substance of choice for four decades, building the insulating walls and switching gates of transistors out of the new metal significantly reduces power leakage. The high-K metal gate technology combines the use of high-K for gate dielectrics with a new combination of metal materials to build the transistor gate electrode.

So hold your breath. The battle for the smallest and most efficient chip just got more intense than it ever was.