Intel has long planned to begin making chips with 45-nanometer circuits later this year, and it said last week it has successfully produced working processors on that scale, putting it on track to meet its timetable.Although the firms use Moore's Law as a guide, the shrinking process is far from automatic.
Each generation poses new challenges, and engineers are now dealing with such tiny sizes that they continually need to tweak basic elements of chip design.
Last Friday's developments involve replacing a silicon-based material used in one layer of chips since the 1960s with a substance based on hafnium, an exotic metal used in the nuclear industry.
Ross said that although AMD has a much smaller research effort than Intel, its partnership with IBM had given it some tricks to keep it competitive.
Source: boston.com
Tags: nanometer | hafnium | transistor | SILICON | microchip | chairman | breakthrough | Technology | San Francisco | intel | ibm | AMD
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