Intel Corp. on Tuesday announced plans to use a technology that stretches the atoms apart in a silicon wafer, a process that mass-produces the world’s smallest transistors.
The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker’s big leap into the nanotechnology era extends on the “strained silicon” technique first adopted by competitor IBM Corp but Intel would be the first to use it in large scale production.
By stretching the atoms, Intel said the new technology would allow electrical current to flow faster, boosting computing performance and, more importantly, reduce chip-making costs in a tough market for the semiconductor group.
While chip makers are constantly tinkering at the sub-micron level and shrinking the chips and transistors, Intel said chips make on the 90 nm process would also include new insulation techniques and internal components would be tinier. The new chip, dubbed ‘Prescott’, will be available in late 2003, Intel said.
Intel said the new process, which is part of plans to spend $12.5 billion over two years on chip-making technologies, could actually create transistors whose key features are just 50 nanometers. The latest advances are aimed at the nanotechnology era, where chip-making science is geared towards controlling individual atoms and molecules that are thousands of times smaller than current technologies permit.
Intel, one of a handful of companies in the semiconductor group with the financial might to go it alone on new chip-making technologies, also announced plans to move to 12-inch silicon wafers, up from the current standard of eight inches, at two factories in New Mexico and Oregon. The move would cut production costs by at least one-third per chip.
Intel said the Oregon foundry would manufacture the chips of the 90nm process in the interim while the company’s facilities in New Mexico and Ireland would handle the mass production of the new chips.