Published in News

Intel to abandon silicon

by on24 February 2015


Never looked natural in the first place

Intel has announced that it will move away from Silicon for its future chip making processes.


Papers being shown to the 2015 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), show Intel's 10nm manufacturing process and new research on how it's maintaining the march of Moore's law to 7nm and beyond.

While there was nothing new on Intel's 10nm process are expected in late 2016/early 2017 to hit 7nm, Intel says new materials will be required.
In other words 10nm will finally be the end of the road for silicon. Intel is not really saying what will be silicon's replacement. The smart money is on a III-V semiconductor such as indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs), though Intel hasn't provided any specific details yet.

III-V semiconductors have higher electron mobility than silicon, which means that they can be fashioned into smaller and faster (as in higher switching speed) transistors.

The topic of extreme UV (EUV) lithography is also being talked about but due to continued problems with EUV deployment, it sounds like Intel is planning to do both 10nm and 7nm without it.

Intel is also looking into new types of packaging: 2.5D, where separate dies are placed side by side on an interposer, and 3D, where each die is stacked directly on top of each other. Both 2.5D and 3D packaging are good for reducing power consumption, with 3D really coming into its own with mobile and wearable devices.

 

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