IBMs CMOS 9S 90
TigeR writes "I saw over at 3DNews that IBM has just unvieled some new chipmaking technology. " Its called CMOS 99:"copper wiring, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) transistors and improved, "low-k dielectric" " All this and 0.13 microns. Smaller chips with more punch using less electricity. Everybody wins. Gimme now.
Chippy (Score:2)
Re:What's the S? (Score:1)
Another announcement? Sigh! (Score:1)
They read like Guiness Book entries. The world's largest submarine sandwich, largest grilled cheeze, largest ________ sandwich.
They are all chips but our special feature in doing it is _________ and that means we can put out a Gee Whiz press release.
The rules say we should be impressed but pardon if I don't have enough "impressed" emotions to go around.
Re:... (Score:1)
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Re:First likely use of this... (Score:1)
Re:What class of chips will these be (Score:2)
You listnin' Motorola?
Re:What class of chips will these be (Score:1)
Re: All of these breakthroughs in chip design. (Score:1)
e= mc squared? nahh its about 2.718281828459045235602874713527
Nah, it is E=mc^2. It's case-sensitive, you know.
Re:Very funny (Score:1)
Re:good chips (Score:2)
Daniel
Re:Breaking news on CNN!! (Score:1)
And in other news, Water is Wet, Gravity Sucks, and Nader Still Lost.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision! [schells.com]
Re:Go IBM!! (Score:1)
- shallow trench isolation (STI). People considered IBM crazy when they said they'd just polish the wafers essentially in a mud slurry and keep defect counts low. IBM pulled it off and everyone followed.
- Copper interconnect. Copper is a deep trap in silicon, so people said you'd be crazy using this stuff in a fab. If you do it incorrectly, you can contaminate the entire fab. IBM did it.
- SOI technology. Other companies cancelled their SOI programs in the last downturn, IBM kept it alive. They are now harvesting the fruits.
- low k1 (leading to lower capacitance, faster switching speeds). Admittedly, others are working on it too, but it seems IBM solved the remaining problems first.
In general, there are a whole bunch of areas where IBM is the undisputed leader (e.g. lithography - IC patterning, SOI, DRAM). They don't need to announce vaporware to push their stock, they just do it.
Gimme Now... (Score:2)
Re:Well maybe there's a valid reason. (Score:1)
Well if you scroll Slashdot's homepage down just a tad bit further you'll notice the post announcing 30 nanometer transistor technology achieved by Intel. Don't be blinded by the hype. This company has made some bad decisions in the past but that doesn't mean they can't come up with nifty hardware tech anymore.
Just out of curiosity, what job do you have at Intel ?
RTFA (Score:1)
Re:SOI is expensive (Score:2)
SOI is significantly different from SOS, for one thing the insulator is not sapphire, and the advantages do look like they will be able to compensate for the higher cost. Chief among them are freedom from body effect and latch-up and ultra low-voltage operation. People have been interested for years in SOI technologies, including SOS, but have in the past only used them for radiation-hard military/space type things because of the cost. Today, with much lower defect densities in SOI wafers, the cost is decreasing dramatically.
Re:good chips (Score:2)
Not really. All you need is a bag of your regular ~3-7 cm chips and a large mallet...
Re:Chippy (Score:1)
Imbedded DRAM latency (Score:1)
did Taco write the article? (Score:2)
Going to 0.13 circuitry get smaller
these guys must have went to the same grammer school
Direct Link (Score:1)
Re:(OT) How about Intel's BIOS efforts? (Score:1)
Additional Info (Score:3)
IBM's announcement [ibm.com]
The Register article [theregister.co.uk] concerning 10 GHz Power PC processors.
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it won't run linux (Score:3)
For the record.... (Score:2)
Re: All of these breakthroughs in chip design. (Score:1)
You can find this yourself by searching "silicon spheres integrated circuits" on Google.
Re:Chippy (Score:1)
Re: All of these breakthroughs in chip design. (Score:1)
Re:did Taco write the article? (Score:1)
If you're going to attack someone else's grammar, check your own first. Jeez.
Re: All of these breakthroughs in chip design. (Score:1)
Re: All of these breakthroughs in chip design. (Score:2)
It's impossible to make 3D "modules" that don't end up burying circut components *very* deeply (think about a 16x16x16 bit "processor": even if each junction has just three transistors (up, down, right) you end up with transistors that are 24 times their size away from heat dissipation -- in ANY direction. they don't have a substrate to wick away heat, nor a nice big surface of nice heat conductors (read: metal) only a few microns away (like in the case of your M1,M2... layers in traditional chip fab). Of course, this will typically be MUCH higher since at each element in the matrix you'll want to actually DO something instead of just switch...
-Chris
PS. I'm talking out of my ass so if you moderate me up, I'll cut off your balls.
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Late breaking news (Score:1)
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(due to the lack of time in writing this, I grabbed the first link containing the info I need from a search. It may or may not be the best ASM document, but that's not my point here
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Re: All of these breakthroughs in chip design. (Score:1)
This could all be propaganda. I am interested in the heat dissipation on these bad mamajamas though, so I emailed them to get some tech specs on how they deal with this.
l8rs
Boot time? Of all that is holy... (Score:1)
Re:did Taco write the article? (Score:1)
Uh, he deliberately wrote it that way as a joke. It's making a humorous point by imitating the thing he was commenting on. Get it now?
Ball Semiconductors (Score:1)
however, the draw back is that the transistor size is MUCH larger. (5 microns, i think) in other words, we won't see these 2 technologies combined for a long time.
i don't have time to look up the details but if i remember correctly, their transistors were on the order of 5.0um. Thats about 30 times larger than the 0.13um transistors that we can print on wafers.
do a search for "ball semiconductor" and you will find a lot of information.
http://www.ballsemi.com
What class of chips will these be (Score:1)
Is this a leap over Intel current capabilities.
Re:good chips (Score:1)
An old college roommate had a theory that they simply put one Pringle's chip in the bottom of an empty can and sealed the can shut.
The Pringle's chips subsequently reproduce asexually. When all oxygen and space resources are consumed, they cease to reproduce.
Voila, a full can of eerie, perfectly-formed potato chips.
:)
good chips (Score:4)
Re:(OT) How about Intel's BIOS efforts? (Score:1)
... (Score:3)
It's a shame that news like this so seldom gets people excited anymore. "They made a faster, smaller microchip!? Who would have thought it?" Leaps in technology like this, however, don't happen automatically. There are researchers busting their asses daily trying to squeeze every last drop of performance out of hardware.
Mainframe G3s (z-servers) already using CMOS? (Score:1)
Re:good chips (Score:1)
Awwww, c'mon moderators -- I thought that one was pretty funny!
Re:(OT) How about Intel's BIOS efforts? (Score:1)
Re:What class of chips will these be (Score:3)
Excuse me? (Score:1)
Mmmhhh, new stuff. New stuff = expensive stuff = evil(tm).
Will wait.
99? (Score:2)
Mainstream Market (Score:1)
Amigori
What's the S? (Score:1)
Re:did Taco write the article? (Score:2)
Re:First likely use of this... (Score:1)
Re:good chips (Score:3)
For more on early Potato Chip technology and Fabs: link [ccsu.edu]
Next in the news, IBM announces BBQ, Sour Cream & Onion and Cool Ranch chips. Intel counters with theoretical Mesquite and Cheddar flavored P4's.
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Re:First likely use of this... (Score:4)
Incidentally, DRAM is unlikely to move into SOI any time soon, because the raw wafers have too many defects. For ordinary circuits that class of defects doesn't really matter, but when you're trying to store fewer than 50,000 electrons for 64,000,000 nS, they can kill.
DRAM is much better off in bulk or epi silicon, rather than SOI. Besides, there's so much density and cost pressure that relatively crude, slow devices are used. Even if one wanted to pay for faster transistors, it wouldn't do you much good. The paramount need to shut off the switch into the DRAM cell (so it can hold that 0 or 1) means that particular transistor *can't* be optimized for performance, and that one link can quickly become the performance-dominating factor. In other words, it isn't terribly cost-effective for an ordinary DRAM to pay for fast transistors.
Re:did Taco write the article? (Score:1)
You just made my day 8^)
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Re:Excuse me? (Score:1)
(New Stuff - 1) = was expensive, now cheaper = good(tm).
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SOI is expensive (Score:2)
Re:Chippy (Score:1)
IBM has been doing something for a long time - you've just not been paying attention. They have one of the premier microelectronics research programs in the world, along with a computer architecture group that is second to none. Example: all IBM mainframe products have been switched over to run on the PowerPC chip, along with the AS/400 and the RS/6000.
...phil
Re:99? (Score:1)
Re:SOI is expensive (Score:1)
Your Working Boy,
Breaking news on CNN!! (Score:2)
Nothing I can say would be any funnier than that headline.
Well maybe there's a valid reason. (Score:3)
Those researchers don't get the respect they deserve because normal people don't rate those breakthroughs as high, because the need for such technical progression, from their point of view, is simply not graspable for them. It's not as apparent anymore, because the applicaitons they use allready run.. on a functional level, computers have little more to offer, it can only get faster and easier to use, but that's about it.
So sure, in the good old days, people cared to go from 16 mhz to 40. Even though that was a small step, together with a few other enhancements to the system architecture, it made windows 3.11 a reality (I'm not trying to say windows is my criterium for progression here, it's just the OS I used back then).
Now clockspeeds jump from 1.1ghz to 1.5ghz or whatever, but John Doe doesn't care about this.. he cares about reading his email now. Windows 2000 runs fine on his 166 or 180, he doesn't really need "faster", that is just a convenience that 'happens automatically when you buy a new pc". The ones who need "faster" are the ones playing games, like his kids perhaps, but then you also see that todays games and gamesystems are shifting allmost completely into a dedicated market. PS2, DC, Xbox,..
I'm NOT saying chipmakers should stop getting on with their new designs and research. *I* WANT these fast things as much as the next guy who likes to game every now and then. But to most people, the difference between 1.1 and 1.5 means as much as the difference between windows 98 and 98OSR2 I think.
Still, *clap* *clap* for Big Blue!.. the one minute it's Intel topping the charts, the next it's IBM.. seems like technology deathmatch at times..
Re:Go IBM!! (Score:1)
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G3's, the article says (Score:1)
Re:Go IBM!! (Score:1)
Re:good chips (Score:2)
Printing on the packaging of an IBM PPC or Intel P4 (or Itanium):
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Re:did Taco write the article? (Score:1)
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Re:(OT) How about Intel's BIOS efforts? (Score:1)
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This isn't a CMOS (Score:1)
CCS = Compilementary Copper Semiconductor
But the complementary thing is a bit abitrary, so
CS = Copper Semiconductor
is perhaps more appropriate
POWER4 (Score:1)
"This new manufacturing technique will be used to produce future generations of the IBM POWER4"
The POWER4 is not a PowerPC processor, but they are related. The best way to define the two, POWER and PowerPC, is...
The POWER4 will be a 4 chips on a single die. Each chip in the POWER4 will consist of 2 processing cores with a shared L2 cache. Speed between cores in a chip will be >100 GB/s. Speed between chips will be >500 MHz (>35 GB/s).
More details can be found at http://www.chips.ibm.com/news/1999/microprocessor9 9.pdf [ibm.com]
- George
Re:99? (Score:1)
Re:99? (Score:1)
The Programmer's Cheer? (Score:2)
Shift to the Right!
Pop Up!
Push Down!
Byte! Byte! Byte
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
More info (Score:4)
cooperation (Score:2)
First likely use of this... (Score:3)
And if I'm way off on the semiconductor stuff, I'd be as interested as anyone to find what's correct.
Evan
Re:good chips (Score:2)
Go IBM!! (Score:1)
Assuming this isn't vaporware, this is the 3rd time in a month IBM is in the news with a new tech. My point behind this post is that IBM was downgraded (IMO) to underdog status because of stagnation in the mid 90's. Now look at em, they're pushing ahead into the future as hard as AMD/Intel by revolutionizing and inventing instead of incrementing technology.
"Me Ted"
Re:good chips (Score:1)
Reading the can, those wholesome ingredients are: Wheat Starch, Maltodextrin (from Corn), Salt, and Dextrose (from Corn)
Yep, just add MSG and Caffiene and they'd be an important part of any geek diet. Yum! =9
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Re:First likely use of this... (Score:1)
With these chips, 4+GB DIMMs should become fairly commonplace. With that sort of capacity, 32-bit addressing becomes very cramped (as cramped as can be, to be precise).
Re:Chippy (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/05/23/0427224.s
The low-k stuff is newer, but should provide an ever larger boost to the various e-Server series.
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Re:good chips (ot) (Score:1)
and then in a desperate attempt to get back on topic(!)
I think the S in CMOS 9S is in some kinda rare isotope of Silicon, Silicon-9, which is soooo rare they can scarcely manage enough to make a chip of 0.13 microns. No there's a low fat chip...
oooh, it was almost a good save, but that pun will surely be rewarded with a downward mod...
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(OT) How about Intel's BIOS efforts? (Score:2)
Low power (Score:1)
Yes, IBM's 9S is more advanced than the current 8S2 process. However the current process (8S2) already uses copper wires and SOI, and the low-k dielectric is already in use in IBM's C-11 ASIC process [ibm.com]. In addition C-11 has embedded DRAM on chip.
IBM seems to be fighting with Intel and AMD for the lead in process technology. Remember IBM is also fabing the next generation of Alpha processors as well as Transmeta's Crusoe.
Timing (Score:1)
Re:Timing (Score:1)
Re:99? (Score:1)
Re:Chippy (Score:2)
'Course, it could be true. They have been fabbing chips for AMD and letting AMD use their copper interconnect technology. (They and Motorola seem to be making it abundantly clear that they don't care about the desktop market, much to my frustration.) I just doubt that IBM would help a competitor in the server market.
Everybody wins? (Score:2)
Well, maybe Intel doesn't win.
Re:SOI is expensive (Score:2)
I think the silicon-on-saphire helps making circuits rad-hard. At least last time I skimed a rad-hard catalouge RCA had a 10Mhz MIPS R2000 clone done on SOS, and a lot of the other parts were SOS also.
All of these breakthroughs in chip design. (Score:2)
Increase in production, combined with increase of chip speed= more chips we can use to design faster ways of producing faster chips. Sounds like natural log to me.
e= mc squared? nahh its about 2.718281828459045235602874713527