Intel Goes 3D In Chip Manufacturing
Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) has announced a new breakthrough in chip manufacturing technology where instead of traditional 2 dimensional chip fabrication, 3 dimensional transistor manufacturing is being used to adhere to Moore’s Law, which is fast approaching its end of life.
The technology that is under development by Intel is projected to have a dramatic impact on the manufacturing process of microchips for data centers to handheld tablets and smartphones.
Intel has felt its absence in the smartphone and tablet sector hurting its lions share in the chip market. The development of 3D chip manufacturing will provide Intel with the ammunition to enter these sectors and compete with ARM Holding’s architecture based chips, which dominate today’s smartphones and chips.
The new 3 dimensional chip manufacturing process according to Intel can switch 37 percent faster than those currently produced chips on the 32 nm processors which also operate at lower voltage, the chips with 3 dimensional transistors can also operate at 18 percent faster at a higher voltage. The overall power consumption in the 3 dimensional transistor chips is set to come down by half. Intel also expressed that the production cost of the new 3D transistors will increase the production costs by 2 to 3 percent, not to forget the onetime cost in modifying or changing the current fabricators.
Intel also announced that the 3D transistors will be implemented in the upcoming “ivy bridge” line of chips that will be the successor to the currently sold sandy bridge line of processors. There was no specific time mentioned by Intel about the release of these chips, although the ivy bridge processors are projected to succeed sandy bridge in 2012.
Intel also announced that the 3D chip manufacturing process will be implemented on all of its 22 nm based processor manufacturing process for personal computers, handhelds and even servers. There are many other companies that are currently working on 3D gate structures, although none of them are close to commercial production.
ARM holdings (NASDAQ:ARMH) however has currently no interest in 3D transistor based chip manufacturing process; instead it is focusing on 20 nm based chips that are capable of competing with Intel’s 3D transistor chips. The executive vice president of ARM, Ian Drew, said that the robustness of the ARM ecosystem will help it compete against Intel’s new line of better capacity and efficient chips.
AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) chip manufacturing operations unit, Globalfoundaries has denied the requirement of these chips for the 20 to 22 nm generation of chips, however beyond the 22 nm range, Globalfoundaries said that they will consider the 3D transistor chip manufacturing process. Globalfoundaries shares chip manufacturing and R&D expenses with Samsung and IBM (NYSE:IBM).
