IBM and AMD's stressed silicon yields transistor performance boost

[Steve]

The 90nm chip manufacturing process is pretty well settled in now. Of course, many still remember Intel's Prescott, which wasn't just a simple die shrink, and so got a little... hot, shall we say? AMD took a different approach, shrinking first, adding features later, which perhaps proved the wiser option. Now, it's all about 65nm and beyond. AMD and IBM have been working on a 65nm process, which will go into mass production next year. Their latest techniques have yielded a 40% transistor performance increase.

As with previous implementations of the technique, AMD and IBM's 'stressed silicon' process uses Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) to stretch a layer of pure silicon. The SiGe atoms are further apart than the silicon's, which stretch to align themselves with the SiGe lattice. The SiGe layer is applied to the insulating material used as the basis of the two firms' silicon-on-insulator process. Once the silicon lattice has been stretched, the SiGe layer is removed. The interaction of the insulator and the silicon helps retain the wider atomic spacing, a techique the companies call Stress Memorisation Technology.

[The Register]

[kempez]

Sweet!

I'm hoping AMD will release some nice 65nm's for the 939 platform

[Syn]

Sweet!

I'm hoping AMD will release some nice 65nm's for the 939 platform

939 is going to last for about month or more and then AMD is changing to M2 sockett, i think its called like that. Which is why i am bit carefull about upgrading but i decided to go for sockett 939 with single-core chip and next year i will switch to the new m2 sockett and duel core.

[Steve]

A month? I expect it'll last a lot longer than that. Crickey, socket A can still be had.

[kempez]

Yeah Skt 939 is on AMD's list into 2007 mefinks

[Smokey21]

939 will be around for a long time yet, M2, is just a different socket, why is everyone getting excited about it?

I hope this dide shrink can bring us some faster speeds, we really need more mhz for CF and SLI. It's about time we had an affordable 2.8Ghz A64 IM. AMD haven't gone very far in terms of mhz with there A64's at all. It started with the 3200+ Clawhammr at 2ghz, and the highest none FX is 2.4ghz. Pretty pathetic really.

[Stoo]

M2 brings DDR2 and a few other tweaks..

I thought they were going to skip it and move directly to DDR3, but I guess they had a change of mind..