Intel and IBM announce new material to make CPU's

Cogman

Lifer
Sep 19, 2000
10,277
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I took a look at Cnn when I came across this artical, Well, it did not give any specifics but it sounded like intel might be gaining another leg up on AMD (ouch) as at the end it was claiming the ability to make transistors 20% faster and use 80% less power and claimed this would take them down to the 22 nm level.

So, is this new news? Is is pretty exciting? Or is Intel's marketing director just going crazy.
 

Furen

Golden Member
Oct 21, 2004
1,567
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No, this was just announced yesterday, it's quite new. It is pretty exciting in that we should be able to see shrinks using current techniques for the next 5 years or so, after that we'll be hitting physical limits pretty badly.

There are a few things I want to point out:

First, the 20% transistor performance benefit is both from a shrink AND these new materials. Also, transistor performance does not translate into a linear increase in chip performance, so I'd expect maybe 10-15% chip performance (max clock potential, basically) at most.

Secondly, there's 80% less current LEAKAGE. Leakage is the power draw when a transistor is switched off, basically it never is completely switched off, there's always a trickle going through. Ideally this should be zero (it's also close to impossible, and I say close in case there's some crazy manufacturing technique I've never heard off) and this is not the same as dynamic current, which is the current draw when a transistor is switched on. Also, it's not 80% across the board, I'd say expecting a 50% drop in leakage current is being generous, I'd expect power draw to drop around 5-10W at idle just because of this reduction. Of course, the 65nm shrink and the new metal gates should lower dynamic power quite a bit, too.