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Subject: Re: IBM Creates Smallest Working Transister, 6 Nanometers!

Author: Bob Durrett

Date: 08:37:24 12/17/02

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On December 16, 2002 at 02:55:08, Terry McCracken wrote:

>
>
>
>ASICs
>IBM Announces World's Smallest Working Silicon Transistor
>
>Yorktown Heights, N.Y., December 9, 2002 -- IBM today announced the world's
>smallest working silicon transistor. With this transistor IBM has been able to
>push silicon to limits on a molecular scale not previously achieved.
>
>At six nanometers in length, this new transistor is at least 10 times smaller
>than the state-of-the-art transistors in production today. A nanometer (nm) is
>one billionth of a meter. The Consortium of International Semiconductor
>Companies in its 2001 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors
>projected that transistors have to be smaller than 9 nanometers by 2016 in order
>to continue the performance trend. IBM is the first company to make working
>transistors below that gate length.
>
>br>The full press release is at:
>http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/news/20021209_transistor.sht
>
>InfoWorld: Size matters: IBM creates world's smallest silico
>
>The full article is at:
>http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/12/09/021209hnibmsmall.xml

Thermal difficulties aside, how many of these can go on a typical wafer?  More
interesting would be:  How many microprocessors, using this transistor, can be
put on a single wafer?  In computing the number of transistors, one must
consider that additional non-transistor components may be required.  The
important question is how far apart must these transistors be spaced in a
practical circuit, such as a 64-bit microprocessor.

Will it be practical to significantly increase the number of microprocessors per
wafer?  How many?  I still look for 10,000 microprocessors per wafer.  Maybe
wafers can get bigger?

Bob D.

Bob D.



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