http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2053000/2053539.stm
A professor in the US says he has a way to maintain or even beat "Moore's
Law" - the decades-old observation that computer chips double in speed every
18 months.
Fabs - the fabrication plants where chips are made - are vastly expensive,
with companies like Intel and AMD spending billions of dollars to keep up
the pace of improvement expected by consumers.
But now Professor Stephen Chou of Princeton University says he has a way of
stamping out chips with a die which could keep Moore's Law in operation for
decades and maybe even beat it.
"We're probably 20 years ahead of the curve," he told BBC News Online.
Billion-pound business
Standard chip production involves printing a tiny intricate pattern of
transistors and wiring on to a silicon wafer.
The circuitry is then etched into the silicon and the printed image
removed.
Because the individual features of the chip are so tiny, as narrow as
130 nanometres (millionths of a millimetre) in current chips, the printing
machine can cost well over �10m.
An entire chip factory can cost in the order of a billion pounds.
The etching and image removal stages of the manufacturing process
involve use of substantial amounts of chemicals which can place a load on
the environment.
Chemical-free process
Professor Chou's process, described in the scientific journal Nature,
involves a simple mechanical printing of the features of the chip.
A quartz die is pressed against the silicon, which is melted briefly
by a laser.
Professor Chou says his invention can produce chip features 10 times
narrower than current techniques.
If he manages to put his invention into practice, it will enable chip
builders to pack 100 times as many components into the same area of silicon.
The more densely packed the components on a chip, the faster the chip
can run, because the signals passing through its circuitry arrive more
quickly.
Professor Chou's process has the potential to be cleaner, too.
"In our process there is no waste. It's a purely physical process with
no chemicals," he said.
Moore's Law
The observation that the computing power which can be incorporated in
a given sized piece of silicon doubles roughly every 18 months was put
forward by the head of Intel, Gordon Moore, in 1965.
It has remained true ever since, despite countless predictions that
chip builders would soon reach the limits of technology.
Today's chip builders are beginning to approach the physical limits of
the current printing process, as the size of components they need to print
falls beneath the wavelength of light.
They are turning towards even more expensive printing machines, using
electron beams and extreme ultra-violet light.
Professor Chou's process could eventually save them the trouble.
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