AMD's Speedy CMOS Transistors

Chips are getting smaller and faster at such a rate that you'd think the manufacturers were in a frenzy to produce Xmas elves (sorry, just trying to get into the holiday spirit here). Both IBM and AMD had processor "breakthrough" announcements today and AMD's is a new Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) transistor that achieves what the company says demonstrates the fastest switching speeds ever. AMD has also developed a device with a 15-nanometer gate length (0.015 micron), which is a prototype for the transistors that it plans to use to power future generations of microprocessors. AMD says that the new development shows the capability for a twenty-fold increase in the number of transistors per chip and a ten-fold increase in microprocessor performance by the end of the decade. The company will unveil its research in a paper to be presented in Washington D.C. today at the 2001 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM ) for semiconductor engineers and scientists. AMD's 15-nm prototype that is said to lead to the company's proposed 30-nanometer process generation, which the company plans to have in production by approximately 2009. On AMD's roadmap, the 30-nm (0.03-micron) technology will make use of 30 mm wafers. The 15-nm transistor is a CMOS-based, 0.8-Volt device, designed to handle switching speeds of 0.3-ps, or 3.33 trillion switches per second.