Investor's Business Daily, May 2nd, 2007
A pair of tech giants are bringing what once was science fiction into real life. They're taking nanotech to computer chips.
IBM IBM and Hewlett-Packard HPQ are both unveiling ways of using nanotechnology in the chipmaking process this week. The advances point 15 the key role that nanotech likely will play in future chips.
On Thursday, IBM plans to announce what it, and analysts, call a major breakthrough in chip technology. For the first time, IBM will use nanotechnology in its chipmaking process. It will bake a new material, which it won't identify, onto its chips that creates tiny vacuum pockets in silicon chips. These pockets will better insulate chips, cooling them and helping them run faster.
IBM says at some point 20 will use this technology in the manufacturing of all of its chips, a move it hopes will give it an edge over rivals.
The new nano process will let chips either run 30% to 35% faster, or use 15% less energy, says Adalio Sanchez, IBM manager of global engineering solutions. All of this without raising the cost of making chips.
"We've been working on this for over three years now," Sanchez said in an interview. "Now we need to perfect it and ramp it."
IBM's new material lets the insulating pockets self-assemble at the super-small nanotech level. The company won't reveal details about the new material -- the "secret sauce."
Self-assembly is a process whereby atoms and molecules come together on their own to form objects. It's how seashells and snowflakes are formed. IBM directed its new material so it creates trillions of similar shaped holes.
IBM Fellow Dan Edelstein says the self-assembly process is a couple of generations ahead of anything out there today.
"By moving self-assembly from the lab to the (factory), we are able to make chips that are smaller, faster and consume less power," Edelstein said in a statement.
The term "nano" refers to a nanometer. That's one-billionth of a meter, or about four times the width of an atom.
IBM's new material does the self-assembly. That is, when IBM pours it onto silicon wafers, it naturally forms trillions of tiny holes on a 12-inch wide wafer. Wafers are the silicon disks from which the company cuts its chips.
These holes keep the chips cooler by insulating the miles of tiny wires on a computer chip. And being cooler enables them to run faster and perform better. Heat is an enemy of chips. It can fry the circuits.
Dan Sokol, an analyst with research firm Envisioneering, says IBM did well.
"It's very clever," he said. "It's simple to implement."
IBM has patented the self-assembly process and has made some test chips. Sanchez says by 2009, IBM will start selling such chips commercially. The first chips made with the new nano process will first go into IBM servers.
IBM says the self-assembly process is available at no charge to its four research partners: Sony SNE, Toshiba, Freescale and Advanced Micro Devices AMD.
"It's a big breakthrough," said VLSI Research analyst David Lammers. "And it's a big surprise."
Lammers says it could help AMD, which battles Intel INTC in the PC chip market.
Meanwhile, HP on Wednesday said it has begun licensing a new nanotech chipmaking process it created. It calls the process nanoimprint lithography. It's licensed NIL to Carlsbad, Calif., startup Nanolithosolutions.
This process stamps a chip design directly onto a silicon wafer, much like a printing press puts ink on paper. Today, chipmakers shine light through masks to imprint chip designs on wafers.
Once a company has created a master design using the new process, it can stamp out copies quickly and cheaply, HP says.
HP Senior Fellow Stan Williams says HP needed a nano-scale tool, so it invented NIL. "We created the underlying technology that makes this tool possible," Williams said.
