Again one of those "I bet AnandTech has the best description out there" and I go check and am pleasantly surprised.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4313/intel-announces-first-22n...
Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
41–50 of 104 posts
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#42Awesome! The current a transistor can put out is porportional to the width over the length and chip designers usually want wide transistors[1], but wide transistors take up space which causes more line capacitance. This innovation will let people put more, wider transistors in a given area which will both increase the current they're putting out and decrease the capacitance they're fighting against, leading to higher…
> Having transistors closer together can also help overcome speed-of-light delay. This can be important in caches. But in this case, while they take up less space, the distance is the same -- they're simply traveling up and over, rather than just over. Unless I'm missing something here.
The number of things of a given size you can fit on a plane within distance R of you is proportional to R^2. The number of things you can fit in a three dimensional space is R^3. So as we utilize 3D more and more things will tend to be closer together.
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#43I liked Engadget's coverage of the release http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/04/intel-will-mass-produce-2... I'm a sucker for videos. This Tri-Gate tech was first announced in 2002, I love seeing pie in the sky technology come into reality and widespread usage.
the videos are at the same time incredibly good and incredibly bad, thanks :)
Will it blend? That is the question!
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#44I don't mean to trivialize this, but "reinvent" sounds a little strong to me. This is a modification on silicon design, and a great one, but is just another notch in the miracle of Moore's law. It's more evolutionary than revolutionary.
See 2007 for a similar announcement and reaction:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/01/27/1614207/Intel-IB...
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting that Intel is seeking to fabricate ARM chips for Apple. I presume that Intel is pitching their best lithography process tech, i.e. 22nm. If Intel wrests Apples ARM CPU fabrication business away from Samsung - who competes with Apple on smartphones - then Intel would become a world leader in ARM CPU fabrication and pay ARM plenty of licensing fees! Hardly the end of the world for ARM.
The risk would be once Intel is the world's source of ARM CPU's, suddenly ARM's biggest competitor has a chokehold on the market's access to their silicon. It would basically come down to whether Intel chose to embrace ARM, or tried to use the new position to quietly strangle it.
A large number of foundries currently make ARM CPUs, and a number of companies make ARM CPUs for in-house manufacturing. Intel could not get an absolute monopoly but rather a technical superiority advantage such as it currently has over other x86 vendors.
It has been speculated in the financial press that Intel might try to offset its huge annual capital expenditures by offering as much as 20% of its fab capacity as foundry services.
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#46Awesome! The current a transistor can put out is porportional to the width over the length and chip designers usually want wide transistors[1], but wide transistors take up space which causes more line capacitance. This innovation will let people put more, wider transistors in a given area which will both increase the current they're putting out and decrease the capacitance they're fighting against, leading to higher…
> Having transistors closer together can also help overcome speed-of-light delay. This can be important in caches. But in this case, while they take up less space, the distance is the same -- they're simply traveling up and over, rather than just over. Unless I'm missing something here.
He was just referring to packing more transistors in a given area. The theory is that the far transistors of SRAM cache are closer than they would be at a lower density, and that difference might make a performance difference.
I'm not sure what the electrical propagation speed is in modern ICs, but let's assume its about 1mm per pico-second (3 times that of vacuum). So for each mm we move our cache elements closer we gain 2 ps in round-trip delay. On a 3GHz processor you've got 333 ps per cycle, the i5 die is about 13mm across, going from 32 to 22nm process might shave as much as 3 or 4mm of the longest path. Giving a 6 to 8ps gain, potentially a 2% improvement. Interesting.
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having transistors closer together can also help overcome speed-of-light delay. This can be important in caches. But in this case, while they take up less space, the distance is the same -- they're simply traveling up and over, rather than just over. Unless I'm missing something here.
The number of things of a given size you can fit on a plane within distance R of you is proportional to R^2. The number of things you can fit in a three dimensional space is R^3. So as we utilize 3D more and more things will tend to be closer together.
They're closer together, but the distance traveled in total is the same. Imagine the transistors are pieces of paper, and you're drawing a line over them. If the paper is flat, then you're drawing a line of distance n, and the points are n apart. If you fold the ends of the paper together, then the points are 0 units apart (or near enough to make no matter), but that line still has a distance of n.
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#48Will this allow them to increase clock speeds? They mention a 37% perf increase, but I don't know what exactly they mean by that.
"Performance" doesn't really mean anything by itself without more details in this context, its just a vauge marketing phrase. Go look at the switching-speed/voltage tradeoff charts that pilom linked to at Anandtech to get some meaningful but still very impressive information.
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is orthogonal. An ARM Cortex (or GPU, or whatever) on this process would see similar gains. It's also worth pointing out that current Atoms in the market are still 45nm parts, not even 32nm. Intel, for obvious reasons, tends to prioritize production of high-margin desktop and server CPUs over low-margin embedded parts. Really, this announcement isn't about ARM-based vs. Intel-based SoC designs. I think it's clea…
but surely it is patented to a crazy extent, and therefore we won't be seeing it hit ARM stuff unless Intel lets it? so I doubt we will see orthogonal gains immediately from it.
Saw a rumor recently that Apple would be getting Intel to fab ARMs for them. Seems unlikely, but could potentially give Apple a lead (for a while) in one more area of their vertical integration play.
Re: Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure
#50sometimes i feel like intel should space out their chips more. as a consumer i feel like i can't keep up.
Why do you need to keep up?