IBM and 45nm Chip Development

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

IBM and Toppan Printing Co Ltd announced (http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=A3B5A20D-04A1-4BE3-AC56-4BC2852812BC) a $200 million deal to jointly develop a 45-nanometer chip making process aimed at production by mid-2007.

Specifically, the companies hope to develop a photomask process, which would be used to etch patterns of integrated circuits onto silicon wafers, to enable early production of advanced 45nm semiconductors.

IBM's PowerPC 970 was initially produced at a 130-nm manufacturing process while 90nm based PowerMacs were introduced in June 2004 (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/06/20040609083915.shtml). Poor 90nm production yields (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/04/20040421144333.shtml) has been cited for delays in PowerPC shipments and development.

Smaller manufacturing processes typically increase clock-speeds and decrease costs for the processors.

[Wonder Boy]

just make enough of them without screwing the whole thing up.

[GFLPraxis]

Absolutely awesome.

How much do you want to bet that somehow, SOME moron will find a way to vote this as "negative"?

[LostPacket]

Maybe they should concentrate on getting their 90nm process right first :)

[dmw007]

Does this mean a 3GHz+ G5 is finally in the works?

[stephenli]

Maybe they should concentrate on getting their 90nm process right first :)

true! where is our 3.0Ghz G5?!

[poundsmack]

i wonder why they skipped 65? IBM did not have to much luck getting frmo 130 to 90. this is a big difference. i hope they can do it and do it well.

i wonder what the speed they are going for is

[quagmire]

true! where is our 3.0Ghz G5?!

My special 8 ball widget says that the 970MP is the processor that will break the 3 Ghz barrier! :p Thinksecret reports the 970MP will be at 3 Ghz with its little sister the single core 970GX.

[mvc]

2007 eh? Guess that'll be good for the xbox720 & PS4 so they can get to 8GHz. G5's will probably still be stuck on 90nm running at 2.9 GHz :p

[Object-X]

Ain't going to let Intel rain on Big Blue's parade!

[GFLPraxis]

Are you calling Lost Packet a moron? Not too cool dude...it's just a chip!

No no no. Not calling anyone specific a moron. I'm just saying that, as with any article, SOMEONE will find a way to say that higher clock speed, decreased costs, and a 45nm process is entirely negative. I have NEVER seen an MR article without at least one vote for negative. Look at the main page. There are already 15 votes for positive and one vote for negative.

[l008com]

The new Dual 2.9999999 GHz G5 Tower....... Almost...... so close

[GFLPraxis]

The new Dual 2.9999999 GHz G5 Tower....... Almost...... so close

LOL!

Of course, to compete Intel will offer a 3.99999999 GHz machine.

[l008com]

LOL!

Of course, to compete Intel will offer a 3.99999999 GHz machine.
Yeah but it will come with windows, so that will eat up 3.9 of those GHz, and your left with a ~100MHz computer

[~Shard~]

Sounds like we'll be seeing a G6 PowerMac in 2007... ;)

[Dippo]

Doesn't 65nm come after 90nm.

If all of the other chip makers can make 90nm chip without a problem then why can't IBM make them well for Apple. I think it's BS, there is another reason for G5 problems and it's not 90nm.

And I'm waiting till mid-2007 for the 3Ghz G5....

[Stella]

IBMs efforts so far with G5 processors has been quite disappointing.

This is a few years off though...

[~Shard~]

IBMs efforts so far with G5 processors has been quite disappointing.

Yes, but the industry as a whole has hit a wall, so don't solely blame IBM. Intel and AMD haven't exactly made great strides in 90nm country either...

[notjustjay]

If 90nm isn't working out, why would 45 be any better?

Isn't that kinda like saying "Well, we've been having trouble fitting 9 clowns into this Volkswagen, but don't worry, we're working on getting 15 in there now"?

[shen]

If 90nm isn't working out, why would 45 be any better?

Isn't that kinda like saying "Well, we've been having trouble fitting 9 clowns into this Volkswagen, but don't worry, we're working on getting 15 in there now"?

actually, i think that is more like saying "so we are going to get 15 clowns in this toolbox instead."

....what is scary, is i bet they do it!

[Xtremehkr]

Good news!

I bet the Intel thing was just a ruse.

I hope it doesn't take long for production to start churning out new chips.

[Mr. Anderson]

Does this mean a 3GHz+ G5 is finally in the works?

ha, sure, by 2007 we'll get them!

I can't really get excited about this, though. So they're planning to plan on this one, great. Lets see them deliver what they've already promised....

D

[mvc]

actually, i think that is more like saying "so we are going to get 15 clowns in this toolbox instead."

....what is scary, is i bet they do it!

Might work if you cremate the 15 clowns first. ;)

That approach might raise some other problems though.

[AidenShaw]

Does this mean a 3GHz+ G5 is finally in the works?

3.0 GHz G5 Powerbook Next Tuesday ™

[mvc]

3.0 GHz G5 Powerbook Next Tuesday ™

That's great Aidenshaw, now that you have trademarked that phrase, can you please make sure no one ever, ever, ever, uses it ever again?

Please.

And if they do sue them all ;)

[manthas]

I don't even want to think how hot these things will get. I just hope they come up with a good way to dissipate the heat...I mean other than liquid cooling!

[neutrino23]

If 90nm isn't working out, why would 45 be any better?

Isn't that kinda like saying "Well, we've been having trouble fitting 9 clowns into this Volkswagen, but don't worry, we're working on getting 15 in there now"?

I'm with you. They should fix the 90nm process first. I believe that IBM will do a 65nm process before the 45nm process. It may sound silly to be thinking of 45nm when 90nm is not working yet, however, they have to keep their plans going for the future. It may not happen in 2007 but anyway they have to start preparing.

[Oryan]

45nm! :eek:

I agree that they need to get the 90nm process right first.

[Abstract]

Doesn't 65nm come after 90nm.



Yeah it does. They won't be able to pull this 45nm thing off. They might pull the 65 nm thing off by 2007, but if its they're having this much trouble with 90nm, then I wouldn't bet on 45nm by 2007. Two years isn't THAT long.

Oh, and why does it need to go from 90nm to 65 nm? Why can't they go for dimensions in between, say 7.2 nm? :confused:

[Sedulous]

I don't even want to think how hot these things will get. I just hope they come up with a good way to dissipate the heat...I mean other than liquid cooling!

(off topic) Has there been any issues with the liquid cooling? I mean, if it is more effective and even more quiet, isn't that a good thing?

(on topic) For those with some background in basic physics this announcement is rather astounding. The wavelengths used in the photo-etching process must be approaching the ultra-ultra UV near X-ray range! Perhaps they have found a more efficient way to work with "ultra ultra UV" and thus able to skip an intermediary step?

[Xtremehkr]

I'm not a technical whiz but do smaller chips sizes mean that there will have to be more of them used. Until 90nm, 130nm chips are reliable technology at least. I'm curious, because XBox 360 uses multiple chips in lieu of one large one.

Apple software already spreads the workload between the CPU and graphics card, could that be further implemented?

[ksz]

This thread is misleading people into believing in a chain of events that is not necessarily newsworthy for impatient Macintosh fans (myself included). First, IBM is not jumping over the 65nm process. The industry is going to embrace 65nm for the next 2-4 years. The advanced fabs are just ramping up on 65nm and there remain a number of systematic problems to be worked out. The 90nm process is currently the most advanced *volume* production process and hence 65nm is considered to be N+1 technology while 45nm is N+2. At any given time the semiconductor industry is working on the N+1 and N+2 generations. At this time, 45nm is still in early R&D stage. New materials (such as low-k dielectrics for interlevel oxides and high-k for gate oxides) are being developed and tested, and even new transistor designs such as the double-gated FinFET are being studied. Historically, R&D costs for each subsequent technology node have doubled. With 45nm, the R&D cost may be prohibitive for any one company to shoulder, and hence the semiconductor industry has formed a consortium called IMEC that is based in Belgium. The idea is to share R&D costs starting with 45nm.

This announcement from IBM highlights one of the earliest and potentially most expensive and thorny problems with 45nm, namely immersion lithography. It works like this:

1. The wavelength of light used to expose the reticle is still 193nm. Several years ago, feature sizes (such as metal line widths and spacings) were 0.25 microns wide (250nm). This is safely above the stepper wavelength (193nm) and allows the pattern to be printed or exposed on the wafer surface quite easily.

2. Since the 180nm technology node, the feature size has fallen BELOW the stepper wavelength. How can a 193nm wavelength of light expose gaps and widths that are 180nm wide? The laws of optics tell us that in order to resolve or "see" a gap of X nm in width, we must use a wavelength of light that is itself LESS than X nm in width. Today's feature sizes are down to 65nm and are still being printed with 193nm light! This seeming violation of the laws of physics and optics is being achieved by very clever techniques generally known as RET or Resolution Enhancement Techniques. Since the 180nm technology node, RET has been growing in cost and complexity from simple OPC (optical proximity correction) to PSM (phase shift mask) to the combination of OPC plus PSM, and now on to SRAF (sub-resolution assist features) which is ushering in a new category of RET called X-RET or Extreme-RET. The industry could have reduced the stepper wavelength from 193nm to 154nm, but a detailed analysis showed that simply shortening the stepper wavelength would be cost-prohibitive! Instead, use of 193nm has been extended to the 45nm technology node, but the gap between 193nm and 45nm is quite large and cannot be completely resolved even by the most advanced RET.

3. Fortunately, something called Immersion Lithography has been introduced. It has been tried before with mixed results, but the need for it has never been as urgent as it is now. By immersing the wafer in water, one can reduce the effective numerical aperture (NA), allowing 193nm light to act as if it were a shorter wavelength. The wafer now has to be immersed in water, however, and this creates new challenges for new types of resist and topcoat materials that can withstand the effects of water contamination. Today, however, standard dry resist materials are being tested with wet immersion lithography, and this is leading to problems such as resist bubbles. While this problem can be controlled, it requires slowing down the stepper, which is hardly an acceptable solution for high-volume production. Hence, new resist materials are being developed, and it seems to me that IBM's partnership with Toppan is specifically aimed at the development of new photomask materials (wet photo resist and topcoat, for example).

Hence, this announcement is not especially newsworthy to Macintosh fans. It does not say anything about a new PowerPC chip on 45nm, only that IBM -- like everyone else -- is working actively on 45nm process develoment. Will Intel transition its manufacturing line to 45nm in 2007 timeframe? Sure. Will AMD? You bet. Will Freescale? Yup.

[Lacero]

This thread is misleading people into believing in a chain of events that is not necessarily newsworthy for impatient Macintosh fans (myself included). First, IBM is not jumping over the 65nm process. The industry is going to embrace 65nm for the next 2-4 years. The advanced fabs are just ramping up on 65nm and there remain a number of systematic problems to be worked out. The 90nm process is currently the most advanced *volume* production process and hence 65nm is considered to be N+1 technology while 45nm is N+2. At any given time the semiconductor industry is working on the N+1 and N+2 generations. At this time, 45nm is still in early R&D stage. New materials (such as low-k dielectrics for interlevel oxides and high-k for gate oxides) are being developed and tested, and even new transistor designs such as the double-gated FinFET are being studied. Historically, R&D costs for each subsequent technology node have doubled. With 45nm, the R&D cost may be prohibitive for any one company to shoulder, and hence the semiconductor industry has formed a consortium called IMEC that is based in Belgium. The idea is to share R&D costs starting with 45nm.

This announcement from IBM highlights one of the earliest and potentially most expensive and thorny problems with 45nm, namely immersion lithography. It works like this:

1. The wavelength of light used to expose the reticle is still 193nm. Several years ago, feature sizes (such as metal line widths and spacings) were 0.25 microns wide (250nm). This is safely above the stepper wavelength (193nm) and allows the pattern to be printed or exposed on the wafer surface quite easily.

2. Since the 180nm technology node, the feature size has fallen BELOW the stepper wavelength. How can a 193nm wavelength of light expose gaps and widths that are 180nm wide? The laws of optics tell us that in order to resolve or "see" a gap of X nm in width, we must use a wavelength of light that is itself LESS than X nm in width. Today's feature sizes are down to 65nm and are still being printed with 193nm light! This seeming violation of the laws of physics and optics is being achieved by very clever techniques generally known as RET or Resolution Enhancement Techniques. Since the 180nm technology node, RET has been growing in cost and complexity from simple OPC (optical proximity correction) to PSM (phase shift mask) to the combination of OPC plus PSM, and now on to SRAF (sub-resolution assist features) which is ushering in a new category of RET called X-RET or Extreme-RET. The industry could have reduced the stepper wavelength from 193nm to 154nm, but a detailed analysis showed that simply shortening the stepper wavelength would be cost-prohibitive! Instead, use of 193nm has been extended to the 45nm technology node, but the gap between 193nm and 45nm is quite large and cannot be completely resolved even by the most advanced RET.

3. Fortunately, something called Immersion Lithography has been introduced. It has been tried before with mixed results, but the need for it has never been as urgent as it is now. By immersing the wafer in water, one can reduce the effective numerical aperture (NA), allowing 193nm light to act as if it were a shorter wavelength. The wafer now has to be immersed in water, however, and this creates new challenges for new types of resist and topcoat materials that can withstand the effects of water contamination. Today, however, standard dry resist materials are being tested with wet immersion lithography, and this is leading to problems such as resist bubbles. While this problem can be controlled, it requires slowing down the stepper, which is hardly an acceptable solution for high-volume production. Hence, new resist materials are being developed, and it seems to me that IBM's partnership with Toppan is specifically aimed at the development of new photomask materials (wet photo resist and topcoat, for example).

Hence, this announcement is not especially newsworthy to Macintosh fans. It does not say anything about a new PowerPC chip on 45nm, only that IBM -- like everyone else -- is working actively on 45nm process develoment. Will Intel transition its manufacturing line to 45nm in 2007 timeframe? Sure. Will AMD? You bet. Will Freescale? Yup.I hardly think 45nm processors will be used in computers.

[lilrabbit129]

I'm with the other posters on this one. The 90nm jumped effectively halted the breakneck speed by which processor speed was jumping. Intel's 90nm prescotts are monsters of heat. The 90nm G5's chips took forever and a day to arrive. How is moving to an even smaller 45nm process going to help things?

The only benefit I can think of, is that by going to a smaller process, they might be able to get to dual-cores faster. But if the heat problems get worse, we may never see dual-core macs.

[ksz]

I hardly think 45nm processors will be used in computers.
Why?

Intel's Montecito (new Itanium 2 which may be or has been cancelled) is a dual-core design with 12MB on-chip level-2 cache per core and lots of other wonderful wizardry for a total transistor count of ... 1.7 billion!

By comparison, the Pentium D dual-core contains about 350 million.

Intel's plans called for Montecito on 65nm along with Yonah (dual core Pentium M), but it's quite reasonable for Montecito to come down to 45nm. Intel is not alone with breaking the 1 billion transistor-per-chip mark. Xilinx, I think, has already done it with their Vertex 4 FPGA. Isn't it likely that billion-transistor chips will trend down to 45nm?

[Lacero]

It gives off too much heat that no heat sink or watercooled sink can quickly draw away. Especially if you reach +3Ghz speeds and hundreds of millions of transistors. They only go to 45nm to save money on wafers.

[Hiroshige]

I hardly think 45nm processors will be used in computers.

President Rutherford Hayes said of the telephone, "A wonderful invention, but who would ever want to use one?"

[Windowlicker]

Sounds like we'll be seeing a G6 PowerMac in 2007... ;)

Easy now! The article states "early production by mid 2007". That certainly doesn't lead to having these on power macs until.. 2008, 2009??

[Hiroshige]

It gives off too much heat that no heat sink or watercooled sink can quickly draw away. Especially if you reach +3Ghz speeds and hundreds of millions of transistors. They only go to 45nm to save money on wafers.



There are more techniques for cooling processors, Lacero,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Some are still trade secrets and are unreleased, some are known but there is apparently trouble mass producing them, and others will be dreamt of in the next two years.

[ksz]

It gives off too much heat that no heat sink or watercooled sink can quickly draw away. Especially if you reach +3Ghz speeds and hundreds of millions of transistors. They only go to 45nm to save money on wafers.
If all else remained the same and we only scaled geometry down from 65nm to 45nm, we would increase heat density. Any savings from use of lower voltages could be masked by higher packing densities. To reduce power dissipation, new materials are required, particularly high-k gate oxides and low-k interlevel oxides, new processing techniques such as strained silicon, and new component designs such as FinFETs (and Germanium FinFETs), carbon nanotubes, quantum dots, and other exotic structures.

Power dissipation from CMOS is peaking now at around 13-14 watts per square-cm (compared to 5 W/cm2 for a steam iron). While active power (power needed to drive the transistor) has been rising at a rate of 1.3 or 1.4x per generation, idle power (dissipation) has been rising at a rate of 4x and is no longer sustainable. Eventually the industry will develop new materials and transistor topologies that will take us away, once and for all, from CMOS, but this will be a gradual process.

[hcorf]

last time i checked i thought i read that as the size of the production process decreases, you then get less heat given off by the same unit running at the same speed. The main restriction on speed used to be the heat given off (which is why you can run an intel 486 chip at 2ghz if you cool it with dry ice). (and the reason why the 800mhz g4 in my ibook runs ALOT cooler than the first one that was put in the powermacs)

So going down a proccess means a 2.7ghz g5 based on the 45nm proccess would give off far less heat than the current one.

The reason they run so hot now is because all the cpu makers are running them faster than they should in order to compete with eachother.

I am probably wrong about a lot of this, could someone in know correct me here?

[shooterlv]

This thread is misleading people into believing in a chain of events that is not necessarily newsworthy for impatient Macintosh fans (myself included). First, IBM is not jumping over the 65nm process. The industry is going to embrace 65nm for the next 2-4 years. The advanced fabs are just ramping up on 65nm and there remain a number of systematic problems to be worked out. The 90nm process is currently the most advanced *volume* production process and hence 65nm is considered to be N+1 technology while 45nm is N+2. At any given time the semiconductor industry is working on the N+1 and N+2 generations. At this time, 45nm is still in early R&D stage. New materials (such as low-k dielectrics for interlevel oxides and high-k for gate oxides) are being developed and tested, and even new transistor designs such as the double-gated FinFET are being studied. Historically, R&D costs for each subsequent technology node have doubled. With 45nm, the R&D cost may be prohibitive for any one company to shoulder, and hence the semiconductor industry has formed a consortium called IMEC that is based in Belgium. The idea is to share R&D costs starting with 45nm.

This announcement from IBM highlights one of the earliest and potentially most expensive and thorny problems with 45nm, namely immersion lithography. It works like this:

1. The wavelength of light used to expose the reticle is still 193nm. Several years ago, feature sizes (such as metal line widths and spacings) were 0.25 microns wide (250nm). This is safely above the stepper wavelength (193nm) and allows the pattern to be printed or exposed on the wafer surface quite easily.

2. Since the 180nm technology node, the feature size has fallen BELOW the stepper wavelength. How can a 193nm wavelength of light expose gaps and widths that are 180nm wide? The laws of optics tell us that in order to resolve or "see" a gap of X nm in width, we must use a wavelength of light that is itself LESS than X nm in width. Today's feature sizes are down to 65nm and are still being printed with 193nm light! This seeming violation of the laws of physics and optics is being achieved by very clever techniques generally known as RET or Resolution Enhancement Techniques. Since the 180nm technology node, RET has been growing in cost and complexity from simple OPC (optical proximity correction) to PSM (phase shift mask) to the combination of OPC plus PSM, and now on to SRAF (sub-resolution assist features) which is ushering in a new category of RET called X-RET or Extreme-RET. The industry could have reduced the stepper wavelength from 193nm to 154nm, but a detailed analysis showed that simply shortening the stepper wavelength would be cost-prohibitive! Instead, use of 193nm has been extended to the 45nm technology node, but the gap between 193nm and 45nm is quite large and cannot be completely resolved even by the most advanced RET.

3. Fortunately, something called Immersion Lithography has been introduced. It has been tried before with mixed results, but the need for it has never been as urgent as it is now. By immersing the wafer in water, one can reduce the effective numerical aperture (NA), allowing 193nm light to act as if it were a shorter wavelength. The wafer now has to be immersed in water, however, and this creates new challenges for new types of resist and topcoat materials that can withstand the effects of water contamination. Today, however, standard dry resist materials are being tested with wet immersion lithography, and this is leading to problems such as resist bubbles. While this problem can be controlled, it requires slowing down the stepper, which is hardly an acceptable solution for high-volume production. Hence, new resist materials are being developed, and it seems to me that IBM's partnership with Toppan is specifically aimed at the development of new photomask materials (wet photo resist and topcoat, for example).

Hence, this announcement is not especially newsworthy to Macintosh fans. It does not say anything about a new PowerPC chip on 45nm, only that IBM -- like everyone else -- is working actively on 45nm process develoment. Will Intel transition its manufacturing line to 45nm in 2007 timeframe? Sure. Will AMD? You bet. Will Freescale? Yup.


To put it simply, IBM has developed a new process that may allow them to develop smaller and faster processors. The jump from 90nm to 45nm is irrelevent. This is an entirely new process. Even if they never get the current process to work at 65nm, they obviously feel confident that the new process will work at 45.

While there is no mention of PPC chips in this article, I would think that IBM would definately steer towards PPC with this technology as their fastest servers are PPC based.

[~Shard~]

Easy now! The article states "early production by mid 2007". That certainly doesn't lead to having these on power macs until.. 2008, 2009??

Ah yes, true true, I'm just jumping the gun. ;) Hopefully by 2008/2009 the PowerMacs will be at 3.0 GHz... :p

[oingoboingo]

true! where is our 3.0Ghz G5?!

It's called the 2.7GHz G5, but there's a 10% error in the manufacturing process apparently.

[joeboy_45101]

I am not looking very much into this right now. I believe IBM is doing a very good job at not succumbing to the "feast or famine effect" In the good business years the company invests in research, in the bad years they want to pull out. But research is a steady-state thing, you can't just turn it on and off.

Right now things are slow and dull on the G5 front. But I still have hope that something great will be just around the corner. I believe that much of this current dullnes is a result of IBM and Apple putting more focus into better designed and more powerful versions of the G5. But don't get the impression that I am implying that these processors are on the verge of being released. I believe that Apple is working very closely with IBM right now to produce the best processors possible. Especially since they were shamed by the the lack of progress and production capacity brought about by the first and current versions of the G5.

[840quadra]

I am on the rope with Lacero with this.

Yes there are many ways to cool electronic items, including R-134a compressed refrigerant, peltier (sp?) devices, and other ways to bring temps below room temperature. But how cost effective are these, and how much impact will it play on keeping computers small, light and quiet?

Granted more items are in the works, and new items are invented every day, but I doubt we will se processors like this in our PC's in the next 2 years, at 3+ GHZ.

Just my thoughts, nothing more.

[solvs]

Let me be the FIRST to say, this is great news for fans of the 45-nanometer chip making process!
Someone's trying to increase post count. Naughty, naughty. ;)

Here's to hoping they can fix the 90nm issue, or better yet perfect the 65nm, first. They used to say the 970 was a good test for the POWER5, I'm hoping IBM does a little more with it. I realize Intel is also having some issues, but we were all hoping the G5 would be taking us a little further by now. Sure hope Steve's getting a good discount on those 2.7s and decides to be nice and pass those savings on to us soon (yeah right). Maybe we're just waiting for the G6. Of course, that's what we've been saying about the G4, and look how that's turned out.

Now I'm just rambling. I don't think this means anything yet. But hey, at least they seem to be thinking about the future.

[ksz]

To put it simply, IBM has developed a new process that may allow them to develop smaller and faster processors. The jump from 90nm to 45nm is irrelevent. This is an entirely new process.
Huh? A new process? Where are you getting this?

Even if they never get the current process to work at 65nm, they obviously feel confident that the new process will work at 45.
Are you suggesting that IBM developed a process for 65nm, tried to make it work, decided to give up, and are now focusing that process on 45nm feature sizes? If something could not work on 65nm, why would it work on 45nm?

While there is no mention of PPC chips in this article, I would think that IBM would definately steer towards PPC with this technology as their fastest servers are PPC based.
Well of course, so would everyone else. That's my point. IBM could just as easily announce that they are working on the 30nm process, which actually they probably are, but so what? Once the new process is stable and ready for daylight, they will move whatever designs onto that process that are justified by the economics of the process and the design. This is simply common sense.

If 45nm requires entirely new (or substantially new and different) design rules, it will require an expensive re-synthesis of the chip design. The general trend is towards fewer new design starts at smaller technology nodes because reusable cell libraries are liberally employed in today's designs. Designers do not create new devices entirely from scratch. Instead, like reusable software components, they assemble new designs by reusing preexisting cell libraries and developing any necessary new logic. If the reused cell libraries are too far removed from the design-rule requirements of the current process technology, the old design may need to be discarded in favor of a grounds-up redesign or re-synthesis. This becomes very expensive.

Hence, the economoics of the device (its lifetime, expected production volume, and selling price) may justify a redesign or it may not. If the expense of a redesign cannot be justified, the part will continue to be produced on N or N-1 technology nodes. Eventually and gradually cell libraries will migrate to new design rules and the vendors who make and sell these libraries (and the internal design departments that do the same) will update their libraries to fit the DFM (design for manufacturing) requirements of the latest process.

[rugonnaeatthat]

Seems IBM may have been just trying to keep in the news, this is from http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2005/05/26/afx2060330.html


"Intel Corp today announced the launch of Intel's new dual-core processor Pentium D for use in desk-top PCs.

Pentium D follows the release of the Pentium processor Extreme Edition -- its first-ever multi-core processor unveiled in April.

Prices of Pentium D processors will range from 57,180 yen to 87,930 yen per unit.

'While the Extreme Edition is a high-end product, with the launch of Pentium D, we are making a major foray into the volume zone, as we prepare ourselves for the transition to the multi-core processor era,' Kazaumasa Yoshida, the president of Intel KK, the Japanese unit of Intel Corp, said."

[neutrino23]

last time i checked i thought i read that as the size of the production process decreases, you then get less heat given off by the same unit running at the same speed. The main restriction on speed used to be the heat given off (which is why you can run an intel 486 chip at 2ghz if you cool it with dry ice). (and the reason why the 800mhz g4 in my ibook runs ALOT cooler than the first one that was put in the powermacs)

So going down a proccess means a 2.7ghz g5 based on the 45nm proccess would give off far less heat than the current one.

The reason they run so hot now is because all the cpu makers are running them faster than they should in order to compete with eachother.

I am probably wrong about a lot of this, could someone in know correct me here?

You are right, up to a point. As dimensions became smaller the chips became more efficient, they used fewer electrons to store one bit or to change that bit's logic state. However, at around the 90nm level a new effect started to gain importance. For various reasons it became more difficult to isolate the various signals in the chip. What should be perfect insulators were now leaky insulators. Current flowing through a resistor generates heat. Any imperfection in the way materials are formed is magnified into a current leak.

Fantastic levels of genius and technology are being applied to this basket of problems. If they can come up with a break through to solve this leakage problem we'll see some spectacular products.

[ksz]

You are right, up to a point. As dimensions became smaller the chips became more efficient, they used fewer electrons to store one bit or to change that bit's logic state. However, at around the 90nm level a new effect started to gain importance. For various reasons it became more difficult to isolate the various signals in the chip. What should be perfect insulators were now leaky insulators. Current flowing through a resistor generates heat. Any imperfection in the way materials are formed is magnified into a current leak.

Fantastic levels of genius and technology are being applied to this basket of problems. If they can come up with a break through to solve this leakage problem we'll see some spectacular products.
Agreed.

Gate leakage current (Ioff) is another significant factor (probably the most significant) for the 4x increase in dissipation power per generation. As transistors scale (i.e. de-magnify) from 180 to 90 to 65 to 45 to 30, both the gate length (Lg) and oxide thickness (Tox) drop. A shorter gate length allows a transistor to switch more quickly, but at 45nm, gate oxides are only about 5 atom widths deep. This oxide is designed to prevent current leakage from the active region back into the poly gate when the gate is turned off, but electrons jump the gate and induce a leakage current due to both (1) relatively poor dielectric property of the gate oxide and (2) narrow oxide depth. If the oxide depth is increased, more active or drive current is needed to switch on the gate, but the gate oxide will deliver better insulative properties. The ideal solution is to keep the gate oxide as thin as possible, but use or develop an oxide with a higher dielectric constant (high-k).

[vouder17]

I'll believe it when i see it :rolleyes:

[GFLPraxis]

I'll believe it when i see it :rolleyes:

What, you think it's unlikely that we'll reach 45nm by mid-2007? Sounds reasonable to me IMHO. It's not like "G5 PowerBooks next Tuesay!" rumors or anything. There are already 65 nm processors on the market (AMD I believe). Down from 90nm a few months ago. 45 nm two years from now does not sound unrealistic to me.

[dontmatter]

Reduces cost? Really? That's great, because I was under the impression (or maybe this impression is wrong) that shrinking doesn't just increase speed, it reduces power consumption and heat. Maybe apple will forget about the g5 PB, and wait for 2008 for a G6? heh.

Seriously, though, does size shrink power consumption, and how much?

Also, where is Intel in this? they workin on 65 or 45, or do we know?

[psycho bob]

Sooner or later the 45nm and below barrier will be broken. If it isn't all future technologies will come to a standstill. Computers have been a very accurate mark of technological and human advancement in the 20th/21st centuries. It is fair to say that in one form or another the world would be entirely different without the technologies that computers provide or the ones used to make computers.

If you had said 10 years ago that today we would be making chips using connections many many times smaller than a human hair and reaching the speeds we have you'd have been laughed at. Talking about 90nm technology 3 years ago would have thrown up many of the issues being discussed here with people saying it isn't going to happen.

The fact is technology like this goes far beyond simply benefitting the computer industry, the barriers will be broken. The thought of us as a race encountering a problem that couldn't be over come practically would be a significant and devastating first for mankind. While there are a number of things we can't do it is very rare that we come across an evolutionary problem in the technology sector that given time and money we cannot work around.

No chip maker is really leaping ahead anymore. Sure one might announce and ship something first but all are in the same ball park. Real advancement will only come if one maker can take a significant stride ahead of the rest for example a successful jump to 30nm by the end of the year. These things rarely happen if ever.

[psycho bob]

Reduces cost? Really? That's great, because I was under the impression (or maybe this impression is wrong) that shrinking doesn't just increase speed, it reduces power consumption and heat. Maybe apple will forget about the g5 PB, and wait for 2008 for a G6? heh.

Seriously, though, does size shrink power consumption, and how much?


If done right it can reduce power consumption. However as Intel found out with their first generation 90nm chips it can also generate more concentrated heat and use more power. As companies tend to increase clock speed upon reducing die size keeping power consumption the same would be acceptable. As people have stated here though there are a lot of question marks when doing something like this.

Only the scientists that work for the companies can ever really know what they are aiming for and what problems they'll encounter. If we all knew then we'd be making a mint and working with them not bashing out what we do know on a forum :p

One thing that is known though is that the smaller the die size the more concentrated the heat output. This is the reason the top G5's are water cooled, air cooling just isn't efficient. Sooner or later cooling will become the most important factor. How long I wonder before all PC's need liquid cooling? That would make a home brewed PC more interesting, you'd need to call a plumber :D

[GFLPraxis]

Reduces cost? Really? That's great, because I was under the impression (or maybe this impression is wrong) that shrinking doesn't just increase speed, it reduces power consumption and heat. Maybe apple will forget about the g5 PB, and wait for 2008 for a G6? heh.

Seriously, though, does size shrink power consumption, and how much?

Also, where is Intel in this? they workin on 65 or 45, or do we know?

Intel has 65 nm.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20040830net.htm

Hopefully Apple never even begun thinking about a G5 PB. Forget it. Everybody.

I'd much rather see e600 based PowerBooks. Dual core 1.5 GHz G4 at 25w or single core at 10w and 1.5 GHz, scales to 2 GHz. Incredible battery life and great speed.

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?nodeId=02VS0l72156402

Then there's the e700, up to 3 GHz and 64-bit (this is a G4 :eek: ), but thats way off. The e600 should be available very soon IIRC. Perhaps this is the big surprise for WWDC? 1.5 GHz G4 iBooks that use a mere 10w, giving it great battery life, and dual core PowerBooks?

[jnicolso1]

Does any one know if the use of diamond rather than silicon as the insulator will improve the performance of chips as the shrick the size. I seem to remember an article about using diamond wafers. Obviously you need large synthetic diamonds but I think that technolgy has or is being developed.

[cube]

Seems IBM may have been just trying to keep in the news, this is from http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2005/05/26/afx2060330.html


This 45nm collaboration is old news.

[G.Kirby]

I hope they can get it right. And by that time the current chips should be blistering. A lot can happen between now and 2007. Intel, cell, multicore and so on. ;)

[Abstract]

Agreed.

Gate leakage current (Ioff) is another significant factor (probably the most significant) for the 4x increase in dissipation power per generation. As transistors scale (i.e. de-magnify) from 180 to 90 to 65 to 45 to 30, both the gate length (Lg) and oxide thickness (Tox) drop. A shorter gate length allows a transistor to switch more quickly, but at 45nm, gate oxides are only about 5 atom widths deep. This oxide is designed to prevent current leakage from the active region back into the poly gate when the gate is turned off, but electrons jump the gate and induce a leakage current due to both (1) relatively poor dielectric property of the gate oxide and (2) narrow oxide depth. If the oxide depth is increased, more active or drive current is needed to switch on the gate, but the gate oxide will deliver better insulative properties. The ideal solution is to keep the gate oxide as thin as possible, but use or develop an oxide with a higher dielectric constant (high-k).

As someone who clearly knows less than you (understatement of the year :p ), I always that while less heat was being produced if you scale down smaller (ie: 13nm to 9 nm to 6.5nm), less heat was being generated, but since everything else is smaller as well, the density of the heat on the chip actually became greater, so the chip is actually hotter now than before, which is why the new G5s require liquid cooling. So yes, less heat is being produced on todays chip but the heat density (I guess it would be Joules/cm^3 or something) is higher, so a better cooling method is needed.

[BenRoethig]

The new Dual 2.9999999 GHz G5 Tower....... Almost...... so close

With the same chipset and Radeon 9675 graphics.

[AidenShaw]

While there is no mention of PPC chips in this article, I would think that IBM would definately steer towards PPC with this technology as their fastest servers are PPC based.
Hardly - IBM uses POWER5, Xeon and Opteron chips in their fastest servers.

Only one server uses a PowerPC (the JS20 has a 2.2GHz PPC970), and it benchmarks as the slowest server in the current IBM lineup. The HS20 (same server with a Xeon) is about 60% faster than the JS20 (www.specbench.org)

SPECint SPECfp Model
------- ------ ----------------------------
1040 1241 JS20 (2.2 GHz PPC970)
1260 2236 p5 510 (1.65 GHz POWER5)
1584 1771 e326 (2.4 GHz Opteron)
1701 1777 HS20 (3.6 GHz Xeon 64-bit)

[Lurch_Mojoff]

If IBM are to stick to the punch with Moor's Law, this means they'll be able to produce 65nm chips this summer. Right?

[Rustus Maximus]

I don't even want to think how hot these things will get.

Well how did you think they were going to cremate those 15 clowns we were speaking about earlier?

[XForge]

actually, i think that is more like saying "so we are going to get 15 clowns in this toolbox instead."

....what is scary, is i bet they do it!

Clowns are highly malleable.

[zelmo]

Might work if you cremate the 15 clowns first. ;)

That approach might raise some other problems though.

I bet the G5 PowerBook generates just about enough heat to make this happen...:rolleyes: :D

[VanMac]

It's called the 2.7GHz G5, but there's a 10% error in the manufacturing process apparently.

So, taking the error margin to the high end, we are still only at 2.97GHz

[SPUY767]

Hardly - IBM uses POWER5, Xeon and Opteron chips in their fastest servers.

Only one server uses a PowerPC (the JS20 has a 2.2GHz PPC970), and it benchmarks as the slowest server in the current IBM lineup. The HS20 (same server with a Xeon) is about 60% faster than the JS20 (www.specbench.org)

SPECint SPECfp Model
------- ------ ----------------------------
1040 1241 JS20 (2.2 GHz PPC970)
1260 2236 p5 510 (1.65 GHz POWER5)
1584 1771 e326 (2.4 GHz Opteron)
1701 1777 HS20 (3.6 GHz Xeon 64-bit)

The POWER5 is a PPC chip. And SPEC benchmarks typically give crappy ratings on the RISC side of the fence. I will note the FP score of the Power5 tho.

[iGary]

I am on the rope with Lacero with this.

Yes there are many ways to cool electronic items, including R-134a compressed refrigerant, peltier (sp?) devices, and other ways to bring temps below room temperature. But how cost effective are these, and how much impact will it play on keeping computers small, light and quiet?

Granted more items are in the works, and new items are invented every day, but I doubt we will se processors like this in our PC's in the next 2 years, at 3+ GHZ.

Just my thoughts, nothing more.

Pfft.

Not expensive at all, just put your new Nuclear Mac™ G5 into one of these:


http://images.channeladvisor.com/Sell/SSProfiles/60000063/Images/DCR054_dt.jpg

[dagger01]

I want to address some comments in this thread.

First, the 90nm fab difficulties that IBM experienced are typical with all the 90nm fabs. Yields are always low during the first three years of a new process. The reason why the yield problems have had a greater effect on the PPC 970 than the Intel chips is that Intel has three (or more by now) 90nm fabs worldwide, IBM has one in Fishkill, NY. That one fab is also doing more than just churning out PPC 970s. IBM fabs chips for other manufacturers, like AMD.

Second, voltage leakage at 90nm has been a particular problem and was a main contributor to the delay of Intel's Prescott line of processors and the 2.3GHz PPC 970. The voltage leakage causes thermal issues that also contribute to low yields. It's other technologies like strained silicon and silicon on insulator that deal with the voltage problems and related thermal issues with these denser processes.

Third, 65nm is not being skipped for 45nm. The 65nm process is still valuable and will be put into production soon by IBM. The 45nm move is probably related to multi-core processors, the Cell processor, and/or related to laptop capable G5s. This is all conjecture at this point, but makes sense based on where things are and where things are going.

Finally, we'll see 3.0+ GHz soon enough. Besides, it's not how fast you go, but how efficient you are with the clock cycles. Intel played the MHz game an is now paying for it. The PPC 9XX line has got a lot of legs in it, don't worry about the stuck-at-X GHZ-for-a-year problem. There are other ways of getting more performance out of the processor than bumping the clock speed; adding instruction units and multiple cores being the most obvious. AMD has the edge right now with the dual-core Opteron, but that won't last very long.

Good stuff is around the corner. Patience will be rewarded in spades!

[cube]

AMD is doing well with their 90nm process.

[dagger01]

The POWER5 is a PPC chip. And SPEC benchmarks typically give crappy ratings on the RISC side of the fence. I will note the FP score of the Power5 tho.

Uhhh...that's backwards. The PowerPC line of processors are derivatives of the POWER architecture. They share the same instruction sets, but are designed differently.

Benchmarks are relevant to the type of application they represent. SPEC means more to one set of people as Linpack means something to another set, and POV and Photoshop mean something to others. Benchmarks are relative. Gauge your choice of processor on its performance in your application domain and use the corresponding benchmarks to decide.

[AidenShaw]

The POWER5 is a PPC chip.
http://www-03.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/rdmap/images/20040920_ppc_roadmap.jpg
http://www-03.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/rdmap/

Why then isn't POWER described in the IBM PowerPC roadmap?

IBM's engineering and marketing are pretty distinct at putting POWER and PowerPC into different camps. Even though the family label "PowerPC" sometimes is applied to both - there are real differences between the two product families.

(For example, POWER chips don't support little-endian modes, whereas the PowerPC Book E architecture supports both little and big endian modes.)

[AidenShaw]

Uhhh...that's backwards. The PowerPC line of processors are derivatives of the POWER architecture. They share the same instruction sets, but are designed differently.

Yes, the POWER architecture was first, then the PowerPC architecture was defined.

Most CPUs labeled as PowerPC (IBM750,Freescale,...) were designed as PowerPC chips to the latter architecture.

Newer POWER chips follow most of the rules in the PowerPC architecture, so that by and large they're pretty compatible.

The PowerPC 970 chip is a unique bastard design. Most of the chip is a simplified POWER4 (a dual-core chip), with AltiVec and some other PowerPC stuff "welded" on.

The POWER4 heritage of the PPC970 is readily visible in its appetite for electricity....

[shooterlv]

Huh? A new process? Where are you getting this?

I'm getting this from here...

-from the original post
IBM and Toppan Printing Co Ltd announced a $200 million deal to jointly develop a 45-nanometer chip making process aimed at production by mid-2007.

Specifically, the companies hope to develop a photomask process, which would be used to etch patterns of integrated circuits onto silicon wafers, to enable early production of advanced 45nm semiconductors.


Are you suggesting that IBM developed a process for 65nm, tried to make it work, decided to give up, and are now focusing that process on 45nm feature sizes? If something could not work on 65nm, why would it work on 45nm?

I should have been more clear.

I'm seeing a lot of posts along the lines of 'If IBM can't get 90 nm to work then why are they going to a 45nm process.'

This is what I was addressing when I said that the jump from 90nm to 45nm is irrelevent.

I don't think that IBM would skip 65nm development but hey if they've got a better process, I'm not going to complain if they go directly to 45nm.


Well of course, so would everyone else. That's my point. IBM could just as easily announce that they are working on the 30nm process, which actually they probably are, but so what? Once the new process is stable and ready for daylight, they will move whatever designs onto that process that are justified by the economics of the process and the design. This is simply common sense.

If 45nm requires entirely new (or substantially new and different) design rules, it will require an expensive re-synthesis of the chip design. The general trend is towards fewer new design starts at smaller technology nodes because reusable cell libraries are liberally employed in today's designs. Designers do not create new devices entirely from scratch. Instead, like reusable software components, they assemble new designs by reusing preexisting cell libraries and developing any necessary new logic. If the reused cell libraries are too far removed from the design-rule requirements of the current process technology, the old design may need to be discarded in favor of a grounds-up redesign or re-synthesis. This becomes very expensive.

Hence, the economoics of the device (its lifetime, expected production volume, and selling price) may justify a redesign or it may not. If the expense of a redesign cannot be justified, the part will continue to be produced on N or N-1 technology nodes. Eventually and gradually cell libraries will migrate to new design rules and the vendors who make and sell these libraries (and the internal design departments that do the same) will update their libraries to fit the DFM (design for manufacturing) requirements of the latest process.

Your original post stated that 'It (the article) does not say anything about a new PowerPC chip on 45nm, only that IBM -- like everyone else -- is working actively on 45nm process develoment." I figured that you didn't think that IBM was developing this process for PPC (I shouldn't have assumed). Of course it seems logical that they would make a PPC on 45nm.

Not everyone in here is as well versed in chip manufacturing processes as you, I was just trying to make it clear to those that are still complaining that IBM can't get 90nm straight that this is not the same as making a 90nm chip. IBM, along with everyone else, is trying to find new ways to make smaller and faster processors and they've found a new way. This is a good thing for everyone, hopefully even Mac users.

[shamino]

Yes there are many ways to cool electronic items, including R-134a compressed refrigerant, peltier (sp?) devices, and other ways to bring temps below room temperature. But how cost effective are these, and how much impact will it play on keeping computers small, light and quiet?
Do you have any idea why the industry has not embraced Peltier coolers? I see them sold all the times as parts, and they're commonly used by overclockers. But I've never seen a brand-name system use them.

My gut feeling tells me that these would work better than a water-cooled system. They would certainly be a lot smaller.

[shamino]

Gate leakage current (Ioff) is another significant factor (probably the most significant) for the 4x increase in dissipation power per generation. As transistors scale (i.e. de-magnify) from 180 to 90 to 65 to 45 to 30, both the gate length (Lg) and oxide thickness (Tox) drop. A shorter gate length allows a transistor to switch more quickly, but at 45nm, gate oxides are only about 5 atom widths deep. This oxide is designed to prevent current leakage from the active region back into the poly gate when the gate is turned off, but electrons jump the gate and induce a leakage current due to both (1) relatively poor dielectric property of the gate oxide and (2) narrow oxide depth. If the oxide depth is increased, more active or drive current is needed to switch on the gate, but the gate oxide will deliver better insulative properties. The ideal solution is to keep the gate oxide as thin as possible, but use or develop an oxide with a higher dielectric constant (high-k).
Are we also having to fight quantum tunneling effects yet? Or can we scale down even smaller before they become significant?

[shamino]

Hopefully Apple never even begun thinking about a G5 PB. Forget it. Everybody.
Apple has done quite a bit more than just think about them.

They've even built prototypes. Unfortunately, they require very large external cooling systems, which is why you're not likely to see one of these as a product in the near future.

Your use of "hopefully" is a bit strange, however. Do you think a G5 powerbook (when they're finally able to make one) would be a bad thing?
I'd much rather see e600 based PowerBooks. Dual core 1.5 GHz G4 at 25w or single core at 10w and 1.5 GHz, scales to 2 GHz. Incredible battery life and great speed.
Making assumptions about how an entire system will perform based on a chip-makers press release is not exactly what I'd consider reliable.

[graphyte]

Apple has done quite a bit more than just think about them.

They've even built prototypes. Unfortunately, they require very large external cooling systems, which is why you're not likely to see one of these as a product in the near future.

Your use of "hopefully" is a bit strange, however. Do you think a G5 powerbook (when they're finally able to make one) would be a bad thing?
Making assumptions about how an entire system will perform based on a chip-makers press release is not exactly what I'd consider reliable.

How do you know they've made prototypes? Got insider information or something?

[obimk1]

NA >1 is almost there

and this is the stuff that can do the trick

http://www.ave.nikon.co.jp/pec_e/products/ic.htm#s308f

http://www.asml.com/NASApp/asmldotcom/show.do?ctx=6717

[wdlove]

I wonder what happened to the next generation chip that the VP at IBM mentioned at the time of the release of the Power Mac G5. He said that they were already working on said chip. Or is this the chip that he was talking about?

Two years is certainly a long time, at least it seems to me. Don't know if i would have that kind of patience or not.

[shooterlv]

Hardly - IBM uses POWER5, Xeon and Opteron chips in their fastest servers.

I should rephrase, I was referring to the Blue Gene/L Super Computer which uses the PowerPC 440GX :o

You're right that the processor benchmarks slower, but their fastest super computer is definately the BlueGene/L which just recently surpassed 135 Teraflops - up from 70TF reported 6 months ago.

[ksz]

Are we also having to fight quantum tunneling effects yet? Or can we scale down even smaller before they become significant?
Good question. Tunneling effects are an issue at 45 and 30, but I do not (yet) have quantitative information about the severity of these effects. There is quite a bit of research into such exotics as carbon nanotubes, quantum dots, and qubits/qutons that are heavily based on Quantum Mechanics. We are rapidly entering the quantum era.

[matticus008]

I should rephrase, I was referring to the Blue Gene/L Super Computer which uses the PowerPC 440GX :o

You're right that the processor benchmarks slower, but their fastest super computer is definately the BlueGene/L which just recently surpassed 135 Teraflops - up from 70TF reported 6 months ago.

That's hardly relevant. Blue Gene/L is NOT a server, nor is it available in any serious plural forms (in other words, it's not a production unit). The fastest servers available from IBM are indeed as AidenShaw noted. Super computers are an entirely different class of machines that have little bearing on end-user personal computers because of massively-parallel interconnects, extremely high bandwidth communication, sheer numbers, software optimization for specific tasks, and the like.

I could build a specialized version of the Intel 80486 and strap 1000 together and outperform your computer, but it wouldn't make it a superior architecture or an inherently faster processor family.

[d.perel]

I hardly think 45nm processors will be used in computers.
are you telling me you quoted that entire page-long post just to say one sentence that seems to be pulled from a random oblivion far away from the basis of any comments so far?

[ksz]

IBM, along with everyone else, is trying to find new ways to make smaller and faster processors and they've found a new way. This is a good thing for everyone, hopefully even Mac users.
Sorry if I was a bit rough.

Anyway, I wouldn't quite say that IBM has found a new way. Instead, they are investing $200M to develop a new way and make it commercially viable.

[shooterlv]

Sorry if I was a bit rough.

Anyway, I wouldn't quite say that IBM has found a new way. Instead, they are investing $200M to develop a new way and make it commercially viable.
that's ok... my original post wasn't as clear and simple as I wanted it to be. I seemed to have confused the ones that actually know what they're talking about instead of making it simple for those who don't. :)

Speaking of...

That's hardly relevant. Blue Gene/L is NOT a server, nor is it available in any serious plural forms (in other words, it's not a production unit). The fastest servers available from IBM are indeed as AidenShaw noted. Super computers are an entirely different class of machines that have little bearing on end-user personal computers because of massively-parallel interconnects, extremely high bandwidth communication, sheer numbers, software optimization for specific tasks, and the like.

I could build a specialized version of the Intel 80486 and strap 1000 together and outperform your computer, but it wouldn't make it a superior architecture or an inherently faster processor family.

You're right for the most part, I don't want to get into a flaming war over semantics though. My point was that obviously the PPC is a more than viable architecture for any process that IBM develops and I'm sure that they would would not disount the production of PPC at 45nm. Nor would they dismiss any of their other high end processors as being viable.

BTW, If you ever get the 486 thing working - Let me know. That'd be a sight to see. :D

[matticus008]

BTW, If you ever get the 486 thing working - Let me know. That'd be a sight to see. :D

Okay :). Now all I need are some massive 486 donations and lots and lots of old motherboards to bastardize.

[AidenShaw]

Okay :). Now all I need are some massive 486 donations and lots and lots of old motherboards to bastardize.

I'll help - but if we're going to take on Blue Gene with '486 processors we'll probably need to rent most of Hangar One to house them!

[ksz]

Careless mistakes on my part:

1. The industry considered 157nm stepper wavelength, not 153nm. 157nm may be used beyond 45nm at the 32/30nm node. Also in contention is EUVL (extreme ultraviolet light). EUVL is absorbed almost entirely by conventional lenses -- i.e., none of the light passes through the lens to expose the wafer -- so new lens materials or technologies have to be developed.

2. Numerical Aperture is increasing, not decreasing with immersion lithography. Based on Snell's Law, NA is defined as [n sin(theta)] where n is the refractive index and theta is half the angular aperture of the lens. The higher the NA, the more the incident light will bend inwards as it emerges through the lens, and will be able to resolve sub-wavelength gaps.

[Snowy_River]

This thread is misleading people into believing in a chain of events that is not necessarily newsworthy for impatient Macintosh fans (myself included)... <snip>

Someone who actually knows what they're talking about. Wow.

Thanks for the informative post. You said a number of things that I wanted to, but didn't have all the technical details at hand to put down myself. It's really remarkable how excitable people around here can get, no?

[Snowy_River]

Sooner or later the 45nm and below barrier will be broken. If it isn't all future technologies will come to a standstill. Computers have been a very accurate mark of technological and human advancement in the 20th/21st centuries. It is fair to say that in one form or another the world would be entirely different without the technologies that computers provide or the ones used to make computers.

If you had said 10 years ago that today we would be making chips using connections many many times smaller than a human hair and reaching the speeds we have you'd have been laughed at. Talking about 90nm technology 3 years ago would have thrown up many of the issues being discussed here with people saying it isn't going to happen.

The fact is technology like this goes far beyond simply benefitting the computer industry, the barriers will be broken. The thought of us as a race encountering a problem that couldn't be over come practically would be a significant and devastating first for mankind. While there are a number of things we can't do it is very rare that we come across an evolutionary problem in the technology sector that given time and money we cannot work around.

No chip maker is really leaping ahead anymore. Sure one might announce and ship something first but all are in the same ball park. Real advancement will only come if one maker can take a significant stride ahead of the rest for example a successful jump to 30nm by the end of the year. These things rarely happen if ever.

I'm afraid that your pronouncement is a little naive. As the size gets smaller and smaller, we're getting into a territory where a whole new set of physical laws apply. There is no guaranty that those physical laws will allow us to continue to make processor that will function the way that we want them to. I don't think this is, by any means, a significant or devastating first for the human race. Indeed, it's fully anticipated. The evolutionary changes (i.e. shrinking die process) for computer chips cannot continue indefinitely. At some point it will end.

However, this won't mean that "all future technologies will come to a standstill," as you so dramatically put it. It will simply mean that in order to obtain further advancement, we'll have to come up with a revolutionary change. And such changes are already being researched. At some point in the not-too-distant future, we'll be working on quantum-computers, rather than electronic-computers. And these will likely scale up astoundingly faster than our machines today, though they may well start out slower than what we already have.

So, simply put, we may get 45nm to work, and then 30nm, but at some point we won't be able to go any smaller. But it won't be the end of the world, either.

[Snowy_River]

If you had said 10 years ago that today we would be making chips using connections many many times smaller than a human hair and reaching the speeds we have you'd have been laughed at.

Also, you might want to check you facts a little. A human hair is somewhere around 0.3 millimeter thick. By 10 years ago we were already making chips that were on processes that were many times smaller than this (being in the range of 0.35-0.5 micrometer). And as for the speeds? Anyone looking at the history of the speed increases might have laughed at you, but not because they thought that you were quoting a ridiculously high number, but rather a number that was too low!

[poundsmack]

in the amount of time we have had to get top speedes out of procesors it is rather sad that we are only at the stage we are in

[~Shard~]

in the amount of time we have had to get top speedes out of procesors it is rather sad that we are only at the stage we are in

Huh? :confused: I think I might know what you mean, but could you please state your point a bit more clearly?

[guifa]

So, taking the error margin to the high end, we are still only at 2.97GHz
No, we're at 3.0 GHz, you did your math the wrong direction.

3.0 - 10% = 2.7. Margin of error is based around the normal, not the abhorrence.

[ksz]

I always that while less heat was being produced if you scale down smaller (ie: 13nm to 9 nm to 6.5nm), less heat was being generated, but since everything else is smaller as well, the density of the heat on the chip actually became greater, so the chip is actually hotter now than before, which is why the new G5s require liquid cooling. So yes, less heat is being produced on todays chip but the heat density (I guess it would be Joules/cm^3 or something) is higher, so a better cooling method is needed.
There are several interacting variables that determine power consumption and dissipation. When we scale transistor and interconnect geometries, we do it for several reasons:

1. Reduce die size, produce more chips per wafer, reduce defect density (defect density being proportional to die size) to improve yield.

2. Use less power by lowering operating voltages. The historical curve for Vt (transistor's threshold voltage -- the voltage needed to bias the transistor to the on state) has been steadily declining. From 5.0 volt transistors we are now down to 1.8V and chips like Transmeta's Crusoe/Efficieon or Intel's ULV (ultra low voltage) Pentium operate at about 1.004V or less.

3. Produce faster transistors. This is achieved by a combination of (1) shortened signal paths, (2) smaller gate lengths, (3) interconnect materials with better electrical conductivity (copper is a better conductor than aluminum, hence the switch to copper interconnects several years ago), (4) thinner gate oxides.

Wouldn't it be disappointing if the industry spent exorbitant sums of money to produce smaller die sizes and less power consumption, but the resultant processor was not even a blink faster than before? The processor would certainly be cheaper to make and more energy efficient, but your good old 500MHz PC would still be running at 500MHz. You wouldn't be getting any additional work done in the same amount of time, and ultimately, time is money...possibly MORE money than the savings in purchase price and electric bill. If processors could not get faster or more capable, well, you get the idea...there would really be no worthwhile progress.

So yes, the industry can scale processors simply for the sake of lowering power consumption and building them more cheaply, but I for one am thankful that the industry is also passionate about performance and features.

These three goals, however, usually conspire to increase power consumption and dissipation as clock speeds rise and more features are added. Larger on-chip caches, AltiVec, MMX, SSE, HyperThreading, Speculative Execution and Branch Prediction, dual core, multi-core, multiple floating point units, multiple ALUs, virtual partitioning, etc. all add up to millions and millions of new transistors.

(btw, it's 130nm, 90nm, and 65nm, not 13, 9, and 6.5...but you probably guessed that already.)

[poundsmack]

Huh? :confused: I think I might know what you mean, but could you please state your point a bit more clearly?

simply put, it has taken to long to get to where we are now. future road maps show chips for 10 gigz in only a few years time (sun microsystems) thats a 300% + increase. it took us much longer to get to a simple 3 or 4 gigz in retrospect.

[ksz]

Sooner or later the 45nm and below barrier will be broken. If it isn't all future technologies will come to a standstill. Computers have been a very accurate mark of technological and human advancement in the 20th/21st centuries. It is fair to say that in one form or another the world would be entirely different without the technologies that computers provide or the ones used to make computers.
I would agree with this, however I would not say that 45nm is a "barrier" because the notion of a technological barrier usually implies that current evolutionary technology is hitting a brick wall and a bonafide paradigm shift is necessary. With 45nm and even with 32nm and possibly even 22nm, that is not *expected* to be the case. The 45nm node does not present a barrier to the continued evolution of standard semiconductor process development. At 22nm and below, quantum effects may well predominate, requiring entirely new quantum-ready designs. However, the industry is well aware of *this* barrier and has R&D programs already in place for the N+4 or N+5 technology node. Intel, for example, is doing a lot of research in nanotechnology.

If you had said 10 years ago that today we would be making chips using connections many many times smaller than a human hair and reaching the speeds we have you'd have been laughed at. Talking about 90nm technology 3 years ago would have thrown up many of the issues being discussed here with people saying it isn't going to happen.

The fact is technology like this goes far beyond simply benefitting the computer industry, the barriers will be broken. The thought of us as a race encountering a problem that couldn't be over come practically would be a significant and devastating first for mankind. While there are a number of things we can't do it is very rare that we come across an evolutionary problem in the technology sector that given time and money we cannot work around.
Qualitatively speaking, I would again agree. We have always found a way. The mean-time-between-technological-revolutions (MTBTR :confused: ) may increase because the problems of the future may get harder and harder, but I suspect humanity will continue to rise to the challenge. For as long as there are problems to be solved, there will be people searching for solutions.

No chip maker is really leaping ahead anymore. Sure one might announce and ship something first but all are in the same ball park. Real advancement will only come if one maker can take a significant stride ahead of the rest for example a successful jump to 30nm by the end of the year. These things rarely happen if ever.
These things rarely happen because the problems to be solved are getting harder and harder, and increasingly expensive. Additionally, the corporate world has learned that revolutionary products, those far ahead of their time, do not necessarily do well commercially unless they benefit from economies of scale (that haven't been established). Do you need five 25GHz processors with 1 terabyte of physical memory right now (ok, loaded question, but other than Doom 3, what software you use lists that as either a minimum or recommended configuration?). People who need this level of computational power ALREADY have it in the form of massively parallel supercomputers.

As existing products begin to feel outdated and are unable to keep up with emerging computational demands, the market will *demand* faster and bigger. And the market will buy. And the companies that make, will make lots of money. The tech industry tends to move forward collectively, and so do we the consumers.

[~Shard~]

simply put, it has taken to long to get to where we are now. future road maps show chips for 10 gigz in only a few years time (sun microsystems) thats a 300% + increase. it took us much longer to get to a simple 3 or 4 gigz in retrospect.

I thought that is what you meant - thanks for the clarification. :)

Yes, the processor industry has hit a wall. - let's hope some groundbreaking advancements are made soon so we can see +3 GHz G5s and the like very soon!

[poundsmack]

i am not so sure we will ever see a 3 ghz "G5" though another chip with that boast will come along soon i assume

[~Shard~]

i am not so sure we will ever see a 3 ghz "G5" though another chip with that boast will come along soon i assume

Come on, Apple's only 300 MHz away from making it a reality - how much harder could it be? ;)

[poundsmack]

Come on, Apple's only 300 MHz away from making it a reality - how much harder could it be? ;)

to hard it seems :p

[ksz]

I thought that is what you meant - thanks for the clarification. :)

Yes, the processor industry has hit a wall. - let's hope some groundbreaking advancements are made soon so we can see +3 GHz G5s and the like very soon!
Because the CMOS power curve is peaking now at 13-14 W/cm2, power is the brick wall, but this brick wall can be torn down with more advanced materials and gate topologies. It does not mean that a wholescale paradigm shift is necessary. Some estimates I've seen suggest that *conventional* process technologies and trends can last for another 15-20 years before a real barrier is struck. I think we will see a gradual shift to whole new technologies much before 20 years expire.

Nevertheless, clock speeds are now rising at HALF the historical rate due to power issues and the relatively long time it takes to develop new materials and process technologies to deal with the sources of that heat.

[Platform]

Come on, Apple's only 300 MHz away from making it a reality - how much harder could it be? ;)

Well the end bit is always the hardest ;) :D

[~Shard~]

Well the end bit is always the hardest ;) :D

Maybe it's like limits in calculus - you can keep cutting a number in half as it goes to zero, but logically you can never quite reach it. ;)

[shamino]

How do you know they've made prototypes? Got insider information or something?
This was news on most the Mac web sites nearly a year ago.

At at least one media event, Jobs even said that the entire problem with making a G5 Powerbook is cooling.

[Snowy_River]

...to hard...
...to long...

Okay, this is just a little pet peeve of mine, but I find it quite irritating (and a little difficult to read) when people write 'to' when the mean 'too'.

So there's:
too |to?| adverb

1 [as submodifier ] to a higher degree than is desirable, permissible, or possible; excessively : he was driving too fast | he wore suits that seemed a size too small for him. • informal very : you're too kind.

2 in addition; also : is he coming too? • moreover (used when adding a further point) : she is a grown woman, and a strong one too.

And then there's
to |to?| preposition

1 expressing motion in the direction of (a particular location) : walking down to the mall | my first visit to Africa. • expressing location, typically in relation to a specified point of reference : forty miles to the south of the site | place the cursor to the left of the first word. • expressing a point reached at the end of a range or after a period of time : a drop in profits from $105 million to around $75 million | from 1938 to 1945. • (in telling the time) before (the hour specified) : it's five to ten. • approaching or reaching (a particular condition) : Christopher's expression changed from amazement to joy | she was close to tears. • expressing the result of a process or action : smashed to smithereens.

2 identifying the person or thing affected : you were terribly unkind to her. • identifying the recipient or intended recipient of something : he wrote a heart-rending letter to the parents | I am deeply grateful to my parents.

3 identifying a particular relationship between one person and another : he is married to Jan's cousin | economic adviser to the president. • in various phrases indicating how something is related to something else (often followed by a noun without a determiner) : made to order | a prelude to disaster. • indicating a rate of return on something, e.g., the distance traveled in exchange for fuel used, or an exchange rate that can be obtained in one currency for another : it only does ten miles to the gallon. • ( to the) Mathematics indicating the power (exponent) to which a number is raised : ten to the minus thirty-three.

4 indicating that two things are attached : he had left his bike chained to a fence | figurative they are inextricably linked to this island.

5 concerning or likely to concern (something, esp. something abstract) : a threat to world peace | a reference to Psalm 22:18.

6 governing a phrase expressing someone's reaction to something : to her astonishment, he smiled.

7 used to introduce the second element in a comparison : it's nothing to what it once was.

infinitive marker

1 used with the base form of a verb to indicate that the verb is in the infinitive, in particular • expressing purpose or intention : I set out to buy food | we tried to help | I am going to tell you a story. • expressing an outcome, result, or consequence : he was left to die | he managed to escape. • expressing a cause : I'm sorry to hear that. • indicating a desired or advisable action : I'd love to go to France this summer | we asked her to explain | the leaflet explains how to start a recycling program. • indicating a proposition that is known, believed, or reported about a specified person or thing : a house that people believed to be haunted. • ( about to) forming a future tense with reference to the immediate future : he was about to sing. • after a noun, indicating its function or purpose : a chair to sit on | something to eat. • after a phrase containing an ordinal number : the first person to arrive.

2 used without a verb following when the missing verb is clearly understood : he asked her to come but she said she didn't want to.

(with special thanks to the new dictionary program in Tiger);)

[stubeeef]

quick question, once the 999ghz barrier is broken, what comes after GHZ, we had MHZ, then GHZ, I forget what is next.

[Snowy_River]

quick question, once the 999ghz barrier is broken, what comes after GHZ, we had MHZ, then GHZ, I forget what is next.

Just like disk space and memory. After kilobytes came megabytes, then gigabytes, now terabytes. So it will go with clock speeds. KHz, MHz, GHz, then THz.

[daveL]

Wake me when it works.

[graphyte]

What do you mean when you say the industry has hit a wall? Do you mean we have reached that point where you can't go further in chip manufacturing? :confused:
:eek:
Maybe:
a) Apple has got 3 Ghz G5 chips, and they are waiting for WWDC... (or all-new PowerBooks G5 nest Tuesday™ ?) :D

b) It is imposible to make them... and we'll have to wait till Apple decides to implement new processors... :mad:

Anyway, off-topic: a new slogan for marketing Tiger just came to my mind: "Where's the beef?"
:p ;) :rolleyes:

[wdlove]

Okay, this is just a little pet peeve of mine, but I find it quite irritating (and a little difficult to read) when people write 'to' when the mean 'too'.

Are you an English Professor? English was one of my hardest subjects next to math.

[poundsmack]

b) It is imposible to make them... and we'll have to wait till Apple decides to implement new processors... :mad:

Anyway, off-topic: a new slogan for marketing Tiger just came to my mind: "Where's the beef?"
:p ;) :rolleyes:

yes "b" is almost 100% certian to be the case

and about the beef....watch the cattle industry lawsuites pour in after that one hahaha

[blitzkrieg79]

What do you mean when you say the industry has hit a wall? Do you mean we have reached that point where you can't go further in chip manufacturing? :confused:
:eek:
Maybe:
a) Apple has got 3 Ghz G5 chips, and they are waiting for WWDC... (or all-new PowerBooks G5 nest Tuesday™ ?) :D

b) It is imposible to make them... and we'll have to wait till Apple decides to implement new processors... :mad:

Anyway, off-topic: a new slogan for marketing Tiger just came to my mind: "Where's the beef?"
:p ;) :rolleyes:

Well I think it is B, Apple waited 10 months just so it could increase the speed by 200MHZ? I think we won't see a 3Ghz processor from a Power4 derivative (aka 970 series).

I wonder what will be the relationship between the next generation of Mac processor (i'll call it 9xx) with the CELL design. Are they gonna be related, are they gonna share same concepts but different implementations? And where is the Power5 derivative in all of this?

[fluidinclusion]

quick question, once the 999ghz barrier is broken, what comes after GHZ, we had MHZ, then GHZ, I forget what is next.

First it is Terra Hertz (remember Terra Flops?)

Then it's Peta Hertz (PHz).

[minimax]

Just like disk space and memory. After kilobytes came megabytes, then gigabytes, now terabytes. So it will go with clock speeds. KHz, MHz, GHz, then THz.

I can give you on a note we will never see THz. Light travels a meager 10cm per clockcycle at 3GHz. The resistance of the wires is about 1/3 the speed of that so that's 6.7 cm for the signal to travel. Also, with every step to a smaller scale that resistance of the wire increases with a certain factor. Shortening of that same wire helps to resolve that issue for most transistor wires but with increased complexity of a next-generation chip the total area of it stays constant and the distance between the various functional blocks and writing to the cache will stay constant. Lot's of repeaters will have to be build in with loss of many clockcycles as a result. In practice, from about 3 GHz you will start to loose clockcycles which can even lead to diminishing performance if your cpu has to skip one or even two cycles to acces it's memory or a different block.

[fluidinclusion]

I can give you on a note we will never see THz. Light travels a meager 10cm per clockcycle at 3GHz. The resistance of the wires is about 1/3 the speed of that so that's 6.7 cm for the signal to travel. Also, with every step to a smaller scale that resistance of the wire increases with a certain factor. Shortening of that same wire helps to resolve that issue for most transistor wires but with increased complexity of a next-generation chip the total area of it stays constant and the distance between the various functional blocks and writing to the cache will stay constant. Lot's of repeaters will have to be build in with loss of many clockcycles as a result. In practice, from about 3 GHz you will start to loose clockcycles which can even lead to diminishing performance if your cpu has to skip one or even two cycles to acces it's memory or a different block.


Not for tachions!

[minimax]

Not for tachions!

what's a tachion?

[~Shard~]

First it is Terra Hertz (remember Terra Flops?)

Then it's Peta Hertz (PHz).

Yep, followed by Exa, Zetta and Yotta! :eek: :cool:

[~Shard~]

what's a tachion?

He meant Tachyon. A Tachyon, if I remember correctly, is a theoretical particle that travels at velocities faster than the speed of light. Although never proven to exist, it almost "needs" to exist to satisfy certain aspects of physics. It is involved with String Theory and Special Relativity I believe... haven't delved deep into that stuff for a couple years now...

[minimax]

He meant Tachyon. A Tachyon, if I remember correctly, is a theoretical particle that travels at velocities faster than the speed of light. Although never proven to exist, it almost "needs" to exist to satisfy certain aspects of physics. It is involved with String Theory and Special Relativity I believe... haven't delved deep into that stuff for a couple years now...

HAHA ok :D :rolleyes:

[Snowy_River]

Are you an English Professor? English was one of my hardest subjects next to math.

Actually, I'm a physics teacher. But I come from a family of English majors (both of my parents and my sister), and I've often been told that I can out-English major many English majors.

:D

[Snowy_River]

He meant Tachyon. A Tachyon, if I remember correctly, is a theoretical particle that travels at velocities faster than the speed of light. Although never proven to exist, it almost "needs" to exist to satisfy certain aspects of physics. It is involved with String Theory and Special Relativity I believe... haven't delved deep into that stuff for a couple years now...

Well, it doesn't need to exist. In fact, it's simply a matter of the fact that there is nothing in our current models that prohibit it. Of course, there is the problem of how we could possibly detect them, as they couldn't interact with normal sub-light matter.

[~Shard~]

Well, it doesn't need to exist. In fact, it's simply a matter of the fact that there is nothing in our current models that prohibit it. Of course, there is the problem of how we could possibly detect them, as they couldn't interact with normal sub-light matter.

Cool, thanks for the info! And good to see I wasn't too far off, it's been a while since I was into that material...

Do I pass, Professor? ;)

[Snowy_River]

Cool, thanks for the info! And good to see I wasn't too far off, it's been a while since I was into that material...

Do I pass, Professor? ;)

Oh, I think your response was close enough to merit a passing grade. :D

[ksz]

<offtopic>

General relativity tells us that no massful particle can be accelerated up to light speed and no massless particle that is already at light speed can travel faster than light speed. Light speed is a cosmological barrier. What enforces this limit? Why is the limit approximately 186,000 mps? Why are arbitrary speeds not allowed? We don't know, but physicists are continuing to search for a theory of everything (TOE) that may explain the limit, or it may not. If a theory of everything is based only on the structure and laws of "our" universe, it may not be sufficiently far reaching if it turns out that our universe is not the only universe. A number of strange theories (or ideas) have been proposed by leading cosmologists like Lee Smolin, Stephen Hawking, Mikio Kaku, Brian Greene, etc. Ideas like Quantum Cosmology, Cosmological Natural Selection, Superstring and its variants (M-Theory/Brane Theory), and others all contend that existence may be far grander than we ever imagined, with additional dimensions (10 spatial and 1 temporal according to Superstring), multiple branes (parallel worlds or universes), and big bangs taking place all the time (Quantum Cosmology, Cosmological Natural Selection). In any case, testability remains the biggest problem! If a theory cannot be tested, it is merely speculation. Science holds testability in extremely high regard, and for very good reasons.

Tachyons, then, are merely speculative, but the idea is interesting. It has to do with the speed of light barrier. If nothing on "this" side of the barrier can surpass the speed to light, then nothing from this side can cross the barrier. But what might be some properties of the other side, assuming there is one? Physicists speculate that time, for example, would be running backwards. And nothing on that side could move at or below the speed of light, but "particles" (i.e. tachyons) could, instead, travel at any speed faster than light, theoretically going up to infinite speed (unless, of course, there is a second speed bump somewhere way out there).

[~Shard~]

Oh, I think your response was close enough to merit a passing grade. :D

Thanks, you get an Apple next class... (pun intended)

[Snowy_River]

Yes, way off topic...

<offtopic>

General relativity tells us that no massful particle can be accelerated up to light speed and no massless particle that is already at light speed can travel faster than light speed. Light speed is a cosmological barrier. What enforces this limit? Why is the limit approximately 186,000 mps? Why are arbitrary speeds not allowed? We don't know, but physicists are continuing to search for a theory of everything (TOE) that may explain the limit, or it may not. If a theory of everything is based only on the structure and laws of "our" universe, it may not be sufficiently far reaching if it turns out that our universe is not the only universe. A number of strange theories (or ideas) have been proposed by leading cosmologists like Lee Smolin, Stephen Hawking, Mikio Kaku, Brian Greene, etc. Ideas like Quantum Cosmology, Cosmological Natural Selection, Superstring and its variants (M-Theory/Brane Theory), and others all contend that existence may be far grander than we ever imagined, with additional dimensions (10 spatial and 1 temporal according to Superstring), multiple branes (parallel worlds or universes), and big bangs taking place all the time (Quantum Cosmology, Cosmological Natural Selection). In any case, testability remains the biggest problem! If a theory cannot be tested, it is merely speculation. Science holds testability in extremely high regard, and for very good reasons.

Tachyons, then, are merely speculative, but the idea is interesting. It has to do with the speed of light barrier. If nothing on "this" side of the barrier can surpass the speed to light, then nothing from this side can cross the barrier. But what might be some properties of the other side, assuming there is one? Physicists speculate that time, for example, would be running backwards. And nothing on that side could move at or below the speed of light, but "particles" (i.e. tachyons) could, instead, travel at any speed faster than light, theoretically going up to infinite speed (unless, of course, there is a second speed bump somewhere way out there).

There is one loop hole in your explanation, though (and I glossed over it in my explanation, too). That is, while it is theoretically impossible for things that are traveling faster than light to interact with things that are traveling slower than light, it is, in fact, possible for both to interact with particles that are traveling at the speed of light - i.e. light! So, really, tachyons aren't merely speculative, as they can be tested for. However, all such tests have, to date, shown no results.

As for time moving backward, this is only one possible interpretation of the equations. Another interpretation is that there is another type of mass that is "imaginary", and all tachyons must be made of this type of mass. Now, as physicists don't really understand mass yet, this idea doesn't ruffle too many people's feathers.

The more common place for the idea of traveling back in time is actually the idea of antimatter. This is simply the idea that an anti-particle, say a positron (the antimatter equivalent of an electron), is simply an electron traveling backwards in time. This explanation actually fits a lot of aspects of quantum physics. In general, at the quantum level, looking at a reaction, you cannot tell which direction time travels in, assuming that particles that are traveling backward in time are anti-particles. When you expand out to the grand scheme of things, the only way you can tell which direction time travels in is by observing that the overall flow must be toward increased entropy (i.e. randomness).

[ksz]

Actually I love this stuff. It makes my head hurt and my heart sing to think of the possibilities. You're right: we don't even understand mass. We don't really understand gravity either. And time is an even more bizarre concept. So are higher spatial dimensions.

Photons have no mass, but they still have momentum. And their path can be bent by gravity (or distortion in the spacetime fabric). Alan Guth's Inflation Theory suggests that mass may be explained as the resistance to acceleration (not resistance to constant velocity) imparted by a theoretical Higgs Field whose carrier particle is the Higgs Boson. Particles that interact with the Higgs Boson have mass, but those that don't, like the photon, have no mass. Photons, hence, experience no resistance to acceleration and accelerate to light speed instantaneously. Something else, however, prevents them from going any faster. What is that something?

[poundsmack]

i love listening to this stuff, i only wish i had something to contribute that wasnt already said.

[swissmann]

Whatever they need to do to increase the speed and decrease the cost. Be competitive IBM. Actually be more than competitive.

[Snowy_River]

Actually I love this stuff. It makes my head hurt and my heart sing to think of the possibilities. You're right: we don't even understand mass. We don't really understand gravity either. And time is an even more bizarre concept. So are higher spatial dimensions.

Photons have no mass, but they still have momentum. And their path can be bent by gravity (or distortion in the spacetime fabric). Alan Guth's Inflation Theory suggests that mass may be explained as the resistance to acceleration (not resistance to constant velocity) imparted by a theoretical Higgs Field whose carrier particle is the Higgs Boson. Particles that interact with the Higgs Boson have mass, but those that don't, like the photon, have no mass. Photons, hence, experience no resistance to acceleration and accelerate to light speed instantaneously. Something else, however, prevents them from going any faster. What is that something?

Well, in fact, according to Quantum Field Theory, photos, acting as the mediator particles for the electromagnetic field, do have mass, and do travel both faster and slower than the speed of light. Of course, the farther you get from the EM field source, the lower the likelihood that you'll find a photo that has mass and is traveling at anything other than the speed of light, to the point that once you're a just a few atom diameters away from the source, the probability is diminishingly small. So things are even stranger still.

[Dokter_Mac]

All i can say is that transistors behave weird. Sometimes they don't work at higher dimensions and the same transistor (build with the same productionproces) works well at smaller dimensions like 45nm.
At my work (Amis) we work in a very old FAB (cleanroom) and we were told that we never could build transistors on silicium smaller than 1,2 micron (size from the gate) and we succesfully build chips with a gate from 0,7 micron!
We have a hightech FAB also and they could not build the same chip (0,7 micron-proces) with state of the art hightech machines.
It's possible that 45nm is realistic and that transistors failed in bigger dimensons , but will work just fine in smaller dimensions.
Building chips is very complex...And you can't believe how many factors there are that could have impact on yield.Not only engeneering , machines but also human and a much more.(Even luck)
Let's hope this is true , i can't wait to work with 45nm chip in a Mac :-)
Greetings ,
Dokter_Mac

PS:Sorry for my poor english , we are not all Americans or English men ;)
I can explain it much better in dutch.

[ksz]

Well, in fact, according to Quantum Field Theory, photos, acting as the mediator particles for the electromagnetic field, do have mass, and do travel both faster and slower than the speed of light. Of course, the farther you get from the EM field source, the lower the likelihood that you'll find a photo that has mass and is traveling at anything other than the speed of light, to the point that once you're a just a few atom diameters away from the source, the probability is diminishingly small. So things are even stranger still.
You're making my head hurt again. :)

There are massless particles, aren't there? Force-exchange particles whether photons for mediating the EM force or gluons for mediating the strong nuclear force (correct me if I'm wrong) are usually listed as having zero mass. If I recall, the equation for momentum of a massful particle is:

p = mv (mass times velocity)

But for photons, momentum is:

p = E/c (energy of the photon divided by speed of light)

Wikipedia states that "massless objects such as photons also carry momentum..."

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum

So are photons massless? It is not impossible for a massful object to attain light speed?

[~Shard~]

It is not impossible for a massful object to attain light speed?

Partly due to E=mc^2 though, mass increases as you approach the speed of light. If you look at it one way, if you broke the speed of light, you would have infinite mass! ;) Also, time dilation occurs as near-light speeds. In other words, time does in fact slow down as you approach the speed of light. Lots of fun discussion here!

[Snowy_River]

You're making my head hurt again. :)

There are massless particles, aren't there? Force-exchange particles whether photons for mediating the EM force or gluons for mediating the strong nuclear force (correct me if I'm wrong) are usually listed as having zero mass. If I recall, the equation for momentum of a massful particle is:

p = mv (mass times velocity)

But for photons, momentum is:

p = E/c (energy of the photon divided by speed of light)

Wikipedia states that "massless objects such as photons also carry momentum..."

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum

So are photons massless? It is not impossible for a massful object to attain light speed?

Pardon me, I should have spoken more clearly. Photons can have mass, both real and imaginary. When a photon is acting as a mediator particle for the EM field, it can travel at just about any speed. These are more commonly called virtual photons. The probability of it traveling at a speed other than the speed of light diminishes as it travels farther, though. When a photon is traveling at a speed other than the speed of light, that is when it has mass - real mass if it is traveling slower than the speed of light or imaginary mass if it is traveling faster than the speed of light. Now, this starts to sound like photons really act like the tachyons that we were discussing earlier, and therefore should exist. Well, yes and no. They are still just photons, but there are some processes that cannot be explained unless we assume that they are traveling faster (and in some cases much, much faster) than the speed of light, as least for short distances (and here I mean VERY short distances). This even gets into some of the quantum effects that make electronics at these very small process sizes so difficult. A 45nm process is drawing lines that are only about 400 atoms across. So effects that show up at distances around the diameter of the atom aren't necessarily being effectively canceled out when you get fewer and fewer atom diameters to work with. (Hey, how about that for bringing it back on topic! ;))

But, of course, your equations are perfectly correct for photons and massful particles that aren't acting within this particular area of quantum probability. However, there are plenty of examples of force mediator particles that aren't massless, so don't go down the wrong path thinking that all mediator particles must be massless. Just a few examples of massive mediator particles include the W, the Z, the gluon and the pion.

Partly due to E=mc^2 though, mass increases as you approach the speed of light. If you look at it one way, if you broke the speed of light, you would have infinite mass! ;) Also, time dilation occurs as near-light speeds. In other words, time does in fact slow down as you approach the speed of light. Lots of fun discussion here!

A common misrepresentation. It's not a matter of your mass changing, at least not the way you would think of it. Your mass, as we commonly think of it, is simply your rest mass, which is the 'm' in that lovely formula that you quoted. Now, the E in that formula is really your rest Energy. It also doesn't change. Now, what does change is your total energy. This includes kinetic energy (so it's no wonder that your energy would increase as you go faster).

The catch is that most of us are familiar with the Newtonian form of kinetic energy KE=1/2 * mv^2. However, this only applies if your not moving at some significant fraction of the speed of light. Once you get going really fast, then it's far easier just to look at total energy, which is

E=(mc^2)/SQRT(1-(v/c)^2)

So, as your speed approaches the speed of light, v/c approaches 1, and energy approaches a divide by zero error, or infinity. The other way to say this is that the amount of energy needed to get to 90% of the speed of light would be needed again to get from 90% to 97.5% of the speed of light, and that same amount again would be needed to get to 98.9% from 97.5% of the speed of light, and again from 98.9% to 99.4%. The closer you get the smaller the step you make for the same amount of energy.

How does this tie into time dilation? Well, from your point of view, you're constantly moving faster at a constant acceleration. If that were the case, then you'd get to the speed of light a some finite time. But, due to time dilation, your clock is slowing down, so even though you think you'll get there, you never will. It's said that a photon's clock is stopped, i.e. no time passes for a photon.

Anyway, I'll stop before I make ksz's head explode. ;)

[~Shard~]

<snippity snip>



Thanks for the feedback Snowy_River, that's great! As I said before, it's been a while since I touched this stuff, so it's great to have a refresher!

I'll just finish by saying that although Physics is truly fascinating, in the end, it is only a model. And it is a damn good model at that, but still, it is only a representation of how we see this universe and how we understand things to behave.

I think mankind will truly advance when we can go past physics. Without physical limitations, physical amounts of time and physical distances to travel, the possibilities are endless – in a world not limited solely by physics, (which in my mind is how the universe truly is), a lot of these points and paradoxes become moot. I personally believe there is so much more out there, and physics is only half of it. For example, electricity, which is sort of the lowest level of understanding we have of things (i.e. down to the sub-atomic level), is just a by-product of a higher form of energy we do not even know about yet. Quantum physics fascinates me as well, with its notions of fixed probabilities, tunneling, and good old Schroedinger and his feline. ;)

But, this is all best left for another thread. Perhaps one of these days I’ll start a thread dedicated solely to this type of discussion, because I could go on for days. :cool:

[poundsmack]

please go on. i feel all warm and tingely inside haha

[~Shard~]

please go on. i feel all warm and tingely inside haha

If I start a thread on this topic (whenever I have some spare time that is!) I will be sure to PM you with its link - and Snowy_River as well. ;)

[poundsmack]

If I start a thread on this topic (whenever I have some spare time that is!) I will be sure to PM you with its link - and Snowy_River as well. ;)

sounds good. I will be taking a quantum physics class this comming semester, i find all this stuff so facinating. but everything i know has been said i am afriad.....must....learn.....more :)

[ksz]

Anyway, I'll stop before I make ksz's head explode. ;)
Thanks for that explanation! These phenomena are still quite mind boggling and I think my head already exploded from the 14 hour flight to Taiwan yesterday. (Spending a few weeks at a 300mm fab that's ramping up its 65nm process.)

[shooterlv]

Pardon me, I should have spoken more clearly. Photons can have mass, both real and imaginary...Anyway, I'll stop before I make ksz's head explode. ;)
A little more on topic. Have either of you heard anything about the advances in quantum computing? I remember seeing an interview with Michio Kaku where he was talking about the theoretical barriers of our current technologies and that scientists have even been able to do simple math using quantum particles.

Also I've heard a few things about bio computing like RNA processing and memory experiments at SDSU... Do you guys know anything about these? I'd love to hear more.

By the way I love these discussions, so if a thread is started on this topic let me know as well.

[ksz]

A good source for information about quantum computing is Scientific American. A number of recent issues have discussed everything from quantum encryption to nanotech. I attended a seminar last year in Sapporo (on Hokkaido island) given by a dean from the ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (alma mater of Albert Einstein). The talk began with conventional process technology up through the 22nm node then turned to a glimpse at the quantum future. This was quite a bit over my head, and judging by the glazed look in the audience, it went over everyone else's head too. Nevertheless, I'll ask the dean for a copy of that material.

[shamino]

What do you mean when you say the industry has hit a wall? Do you mean we have reached that point where you can't go further in chip manufacturing? :confused:
It means they've hit some really hard problems that they have not hit before.

It is well known that you need smaller processes in order to implement increasing complexity at higher speeds - otherwise the chips get too large to be reliably manufactured and speed-of-light issues prevent signals from propagating through all the required circuits in time.

Historically, there have been problems with moving to smaller processes, but these problems were solved relatively quickly by the big chipmakers. When they moved to 90nm, the problems they hit were not solved that easily. It's forced all of the major chipmakers to do a lot more work than expected to get reliable chips produced. Even today, I don't think they've solved all of the problems.

This is probably the biggest reason why we haven't seen 3GHz G5 chips yet.

This doesn't mean the speed is impossible, but it does mean they haven't yet figured out how to reach that speed in a way that will allow production in large quantities at a reasonable price.
a) Apple has got 3 Ghz G5 chips, and they are waiting for WWDC... (or all-new PowerBooks G5 nest Tuesday™ ?) :D
I don't think so. Apple's been hurt really badly by IBM's inability to produce 3GHz G5 chips. I'm sure Apple will release 3GHz systems as soon as possible once IBM is able to make the chips in sufficient quantities. I don't think they'll wait more than a short time for an appropriate expo to announce it at.
b) It is imposible to make them... and we'll have to wait till Apple decides to implement new processors... :mad:
Probably not impossible, but difficult and maybe too expensive.

New designs are being developed all the time and it is likely that Apple is doing the necessary research to decide when/if it is appropriate to switch to one.

Of course, we, the customers, will be the last to know when/if they actually make such a decision.

[shamino]

Pardon me, I should have spoken more clearly. Photons can have mass, both real and imaginary. When a photon is acting as a mediator particle for the EM field, it can travel at just about any speed. These are more commonly called virtual photons. ...
One possibly useful book for people who can't get enough of this kind of physics is QED (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691024170) by Richard Feynman. It attempts to explain Quantum Electrodynamics in a way that mere mortals can understand.

It does a good job, to the extent that this subject can be made intelligeble by mere mortals in the first place.

It is a buit out of date (published in 1988), but I think it's probably a good introduction to the subject, nevertheless. And (IMO) if you can't understand this explanation, you're not likely to be able to understand the stuff that people are publishing today. Feynman was one of those few physicists that had a knack for making subjects understandable.
E=(mc^2)/SQRT(1-(v/c)^2)

So, as your speed approaches the speed of light, v/c approaches 1, and energy approaches a divide by zero error, or infinity. The other way to say this is that the amount of energy needed to get to 90% of the speed of light would be needed again to get from 90% to 97.5% of the speed of light, and that same amount again would be needed to get to 98.9% from 97.5% of the speed of light, and again from 98.9% to 99.4%. The closer you get the smaller the step you make for the same amount of energy.

How does this tie into time dilation? Well, from your point of view, you're constantly moving faster at a constant acceleration. If that were the case, then you'd get to the speed of light a some finite time. But, due to time dilation, your clock is slowing down, so even though you think you'll get there, you never will. It's said that a photon's clock is stopped, i.e. no time passes for a photon.
At least using current theories.

Many people look at the Einstein equations and assume that nothing can be accelerated beyond light speed. But that's not necessarily true. It just means that these equations can not be used to describe what happens if you do.

Newton didn't figure out the relativistic terms of the acceleration/energy equations because those terms are insignificant at slow speeds. It is possible that there are additional terms that Einstein (and modern physics) don't know about yet because we have not yet been able to accelerate any measuring equipment to the necessary speeds where those terms would become significant.

Maybe there are no other terms - in which case, lightspeed would be a very real barrier. (Although the effect of FTL travel might still be possible using concepts that are today mostly in the realm of science fiction.) But it is possible that there are other terms that are completely insignificant for the problem domains we're currently working in. If so, then exceeding lightspeed may actually be possible. But current theories (as far as I know) have not seen any need for these terms to exist, so this concept remains purely hypothetical.

(To summarize all this, it's important to not confuse reality with our current/best theories for explaining reality. Theories do change occasionally, as new discoveries are made, and those theories shape our concept of what is and is not possible.)

[Snowy_River]

One possibly useful book for people who can't get enough of this kind of physics is QED (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691024170) by Richard Feynman. It attempts to explain Quantum Electrodynamics in a way that mere mortals can understand.

I couldn't agree more. That's an excellent book. I love Feynman's work.

Many people look at the Einstein equations and assume that nothing can be accelerated beyond light speed. But that's not necessarily true. It just means that these equations can not be used to describe what happens if you do.

Newton didn't figure out the relativistic terms of the acceleration/energy equations because those terms are insignificant at slow speeds. It is possible that there are additional terms that Einstein (and modern physics) don't know about yet because we have not yet been able to accelerate any measuring equipment to the necessary speeds where those terms would become significant.

Maybe there are no other terms - in which case, lightspeed would be a very real barrier. (Although the effect of FTL travel might still be possible using concepts that are today mostly in the realm of science fiction.) But it is possible that there are other terms that are completely insignificant for the problem domains we're currently working in. If so, then exceeding lightspeed may actually be possible. But current theories (as far as I know) have not seen any need for these terms to exist, so this concept remains purely hypothetical.

(To summarize all this, it's important to not confuse reality with our current/best theories for explaining reality. Theories do change occasionally, as new discoveries are made, and those theories shape our concept of what is and is not possible.)

Well, yes, but...

At this point we've successfully accelerated objects up to 99.9998% of the speed of light and they have consistently obeyed the Laws of Special Relativity. These are considered to be among the most tested equations in all of science. While there may be other terms, it's likely that these other terms won't come into play before we start dealing with particles on the scale of a Planc mass. (That's about 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 times the mass of the proton.) So, unfortunately, at this point we don't have any sneak peeks into what might allow FTL travel or communication, if it's at all possible within the physical laws that govern our universe.

[ksz]

One possibly useful book for people who can't get enough of this kind of physics is QED (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691024170) by Richard Feynman. It attempts to explain Quantum Electrodynamics in a way that mere mortals can understand.

I read QED recently and came away unsatisfied. While Feynman's lectures are very well written and thought out, and QED is a book rendered from a handful of short lectures, it doesn't go far enough. It describes and illustrates the "many paths" idea very well, but QED focuses on a tiny aspect of reality. For the layperson interested in a much broader introduction to cosmology, here are some recommendations:

1. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene.
2. The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene (somewhat recent release).
3. Parallel Worlds, Michio Kaku (recent release).
4. Hyperspace, Michio Kaku (so good, you have to read it twice).
5. Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne (more technical than the others).

[Snowy_River]

I read QED recently and came away unsatisfied. While Feynman's lectures are very well written and thought out, and QED is a book rendered from a handful of short lectures, it doesn't go far enough. It describes and illustrates the "many paths" idea very well, but QED focuses on a tiny aspect of reality. For the layperson interested in a much broader introduction to cosmology, here are some recommendations:

1. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene.
2. The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene (somewhat recent release).
3. Parallel Worlds, Michio Kaku (recent release).
4. Hyperspace, Michio Kaku (so good, you have to read it twice).
5. Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne (more technical than the others).

Yes, but what it focuses on is what it says it focuses on: Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED). It's not meant to be a book about a broader introduction to cosmology. It's meant to be an easy to read explanation of the interactions of some of the smallest particles with each other. That's all, and it does an excellent job at what it sets out to do.

[ksz]

Intel May Combine Silicon with Carbon Nanotubes. Story dated May 29.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1821412,00.asp

Excerpt:
Chip makers will continue to use silicon, which has long been the base material for chip manufacturing, for several more generations. Intel's roadmap, for one, includes at least four more silicon-based chip manufacturing process generations, with the last one beginning in 2011.

But the ability to decrease the size of today's silicon-based transistors, which in turn allows chip makers to boost their chips' performance by packing more transistors into each processor, will eventually hit a wall, leading chip makers to look elsewhere. (That date, which could change due to breakthroughs, is likely to be around 2020, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.)

That's the point at which carbon nanotubes, nanowires or other materials and manufacturing techniques made possible by nanotech research could come into play.
What Are Carbon Nanotubes?
http://www.research.ibm.com/topics/popups/serious/nano/html/nanotubes.html

[intlplby]

i don't know anything about transistor design or chip design, but a few years back i worked on a project growing 2nm erbium silicide nanowires on silicon.


how small could the transisters be made using wires of this size

http://www.nims.go.jp/eng/news/nimsnow/Vol2/No12/p4.html

[840quadra]

Do you have any idea why the industry has not embraced Peltier coolers? I see them sold all the times as parts, and they're commonly used by overclockers. But I've never seen a brand-name system use them.

My gut feeling tells me that these would work better than a water-cooled system. They would certainly be a lot smaller.

I am not sure, part of the reason may be because the heat from the other side of the Peltier has to go somewere. Your chip will be much cooler, but you have a new heat source inside of your case to deal with now.

I sure wouldn't want the hot side of a peltier sitting against my leg, if it were mounted inside the bottom of my laptop! :eek: :D

[shamino]

I am not sure, part of the reason may be because the heat from the other side of the Peltier has to go somewere. Your chip will be much cooler, but you have a new heat source inside of your case to deal with now.
Yes, but that can be delivered via heat-pipe to a radiator/fan. So you end up with a system similar to what the G5 has, but without the need to have liquid in it.
I sure wouldn't want the hot side of a peltier sitting against my leg, if it were mounted inside the bottom of my laptop! :eek: :D
But laptops get really hot anyway. The Peltier element doesn't have to run at full-blast all the time - it only has to run enough to keep the chip within normal temperatures. If it does, then the heat exhaust should be no different from any other cooling solution.

Come to think of it, this might be the big problem with a G5 laptop. It might not be just a matter of keeping the chip cool, but also with getting the heat out of the case without burning the user.

[wdlove]

Intel May Combine Silicon with Carbon Nanotubes. Story dated May 29.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1821412,00.asp


What Are Carbon Nanotubes?
http://www.research.ibm.com/topics/popups/serious/nano/html/nanotubes.html

If chip manufacturers have something better like the Carbon Nanotubes, why wait? Doesn't make sense not to push work on this if it will save on electricity and heat.

[Snowy_River]

Yes, but that can be delivered via heat-pipe to a radiator/fan. So you end up with a system similar to what the G5 has, but without the need to have liquid in it.
But laptops get really hot anyway. The Peltier element doesn't have to run at full-blast all the time - it only has to run enough to keep the chip within normal temperatures. If it does, then the heat exhaust should be no different from any other cooling solution.

Come to think of it, this might be the big problem with a G5 laptop. It might not be just a matter of keeping the chip cool, but also with getting the heat out of the case without burning the user.


Actually, it's not as simple as that. The Peltier junction creates some heat while it's moving heat. So, in a laptop, where you're already having trouble getting rid of the heat, adding a component that will just create more heat isn't necessarily the best idea. And, non-liquid heat pipes aren't the most efficient means of moving heat around. If there's too much heat being produced (i.e. the heat of the processor and the heat of the Peltier junction combined), then these wouldn't be able to move the heat fast enough, and you'd be back to needing a liquid cooling system.

[Snowy_River]

If chip manufacturers have something better like the Carbon Nanotubes, why wait? Doesn't make sense not to push work on this if it will save on electricity and heat.

Well, saying that they have something better, like Carbon Nanotubes, is a far cry from saying that they can implement them. Currently, it's possible to create an equivalent chip to the 970 using CNs, but each CN needs to be moved into place - and how many transistors does the 970 have? Until a means can be found to 'grow' the CNs in place, they can't be used for production chips. While CNs, arguably, provide an almost ideal solution to many of the problems that we face with current chips, providing nearly frictionless electron conduits (eliminating a significant source of heat), and path sizes an order of magnitude smaller than the smallest process we have today, until some means of mass producing identical arrays of the CNs can be found they're not going to be anything other than a scientific research field.

P.S. Do you think that they're not pushing research on this? They know that they're facing an end of development in the current mediums, and if they want computers to continue to get faster and more powerful, they need to find develop either a means of using CNs or another technology that can allow them to move past current mediums.

[poundsmack]

solution to heat problem

http://www.nanocoolers.com/products_cooling.php

[shamino]

solution to heat problem

http://www.nanocoolers.com/products_cooling.php
Looks nice on paper, but I never trust marketing departments to tell the whole truth. I wonder if anybody has actually built a working system with one of these.

[Snowy_River]

I have no doubt that Apple and others have looked at this and considered it as a possibility. There are likely even prototype systems based on this and other cooling tech.