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IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

nytimes.com

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Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#11

Post by JoachimS »

Frenchgeek wrote: post #7
jtchang wrote: post #4

No mention of Intel anywhere in the article and how far along they are. Also 7nm blows my mind. I mean current CPUs already blow my mind with how tiny the transistors are getting. And specially stabilized buildings? "NOBODY MOVE! WE'RE ETCHING!"

Given the way we're going, I wonder how soon it will be cheaper and easier to build a cpu plant in orbit...

One covered in lead to protect the lito from high energy particles. This might be the time when pushing an asteroid into one of the Lagrange points and hollowed out would be useful. Go SF dreams, go! (Where is Musk when we need him?)

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#12

Post by creshal »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

Wow, 7 nanometer is incredible! I wonder how small they can get silicon / silicon-germanium based chips before we have to resort to other techniques such as light processors (since light can be closer and even cross each other without issue). 10 nanometers that they're introducing next year is also incredible, at least to me since I'm not a hardware engineer and can't imagine how difficult manufacturing these are.

Process names have little to do with actual feature sizes any more. I think 130nm was the last where the name had any correlation to the actual physical dimensions.

(Ex.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45_nanometer#Example:_Intel.27... )

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#14

Post by BinaryIdiot »

Frenchgeek wrote: post #5
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

Wow, 7 nanometer is incredible! I wonder how small they can get silicon / silicon-germanium based chips before we have to resort to other techniques such as light processors (since light can be closer and even cross each other without issue). 10 nanometers that they're introducing next year is also incredible, at least to me since I'm not a hardware engineer and can't imagine how difficult manufacturing these are.

They use germanium.

It's silicon-germanium (so still has silicon in it). I'm curious what comes after :)

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#16

Post by prewett »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

Wow, 7 nanometer is incredible! I wonder how small they can get silicon / silicon-germanium based chips before we have to resort to other techniques such as light processors (since light can be closer and even cross each other without issue). 10 nanometers that they're introducing next year is also incredible, at least to me since I'm not a hardware engineer and can't imagine how difficult manufacturing these are.

I could be wrong, but I think optical processors would have serious diffraction problems with a 7 nm feature size, since the wavelength of blue light is somewhere around 300 nm.

As far as fabrication, one problem is that obviously you aren't using visible light to etch features on your wafers. The x-rays must be fun to work with... Not to mention, your photoresist would have to resist x-rays. Getting x-ray-resisting photoresist on and off your wafer must be tricky. Since 7 nm is about the size of several atoms, your wafer probably needs to be almost perfectly pure, which can't be easy, either.

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#17

Post by jpmattia »

Frenchgeek wrote: post #15
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's silicon-germanium (so still has silicon in it). I'm curious what comes after :)

The last time I checked, diamond looked promising.

Doubtful: You can't really dope it n-type.

Diamond has the interesting property of having it's conduction band above vacuum level, so that free electrons would (in principle) fall out of the material. (Surface physics gets in the way of that.)

It's the reason that diamond is used for cold-cathode emitters btw.

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#18

Post by BinaryIdiot »

prewett wrote: post #16
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

Wow, 7 nanometer is incredible! I wonder how small they can get silicon / silicon-germanium based chips before we have to resort to other techniques such as light processors (since light can be closer and even cross each other without issue). 10 nanometers that they're introducing next year is also incredible, at least to me since I'm not a hardware engineer and can't imagine how difficult manufacturing these are.

I could be wrong, but I think optical processors would have serious diffraction problems with a 7 nm feature size, since the wavelength of blue light is somewhere around 300 nm. As far as fabrication, one problem is that obviously you aren't using visible light to etch features on your wafers. The x-rays must be fun to work with... Not to mention, your photoresist would have to resist x-rays. Getting x-ray-resisting…

Hmm yeah I have no idea, I mostly read this which really intrigued me but I don't really understand all of the technology and science behind it http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/2010072...

I had always gotten the impression that even if it they couldn't get as small the impact of less heat and the ability to cross beams could allow them to be denser. But like I said I don't really know what I'm talking about :)

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#19

Post by thomasstephn »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

Wow, 7 nanometer is incredible! I wonder how small they can get silicon / silicon-germanium based chips before we have to resort to other techniques such as light processors (since light can be closer and even cross each other without issue). 10 nanometers that they're introducing next year is also incredible, at least to me since I'm not a hardware engineer and can't imagine how difficult manufacturing these are.

This should answer your question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtI5wRyHpTg
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