[COMP] Chip Breakthrough!!!

Source: CNN,

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9911/23/transistor.reut/index.html


Berkeley engineers report chip breakthrough

November 23, 1999 
Web posted at: 2:30 PM EST (1930 GMT) 

BERKELEY, California (Reuters) -- A new semiconductor transistor so small
that a single computer chip can hold 400 times more of the devices than
before could help lead to significantly faster and cheaper chip technology,
scientists said on Monday. 

Chenming Hu, a professor electrical engineering and computer sciences at
the University of California, Berkeley, said the tiny transistor was much
smaller than any other ever developed. 

"It's a new world record," Hu said of the prototype, dubbed "FinFET".
Details of the invention, which was funded by the U.S. Defence Advanced
Research Project Agency, will be unveiled next month at the International
Electronic Devices Meeting in Washington. 

The Berkeley breakthrough, announced in a news release, changed the design
of the "gate", or switch, on the transistor which controls the flow of
electric current in electronic devices. 

While previously this gate was a flat conductor that controlled only one
side of the passage through which the current flows, the Berkeley team has
redesigned it as a fork-shaped prong straddling both sides of the passage. 

This gives much better control and reduced current leakage, meaning the
transistor can be made much smaller. 

Hu said the FinFET's gate is 18 nanometers long, or about the width of 100
atoms. While far too small to be viewed by the naked eye, it is visible
through a scanning electron microscope. 

Hu said it was already about 10 times shorter than the standard
semiconductor transistor now used by the industry. And he hoped to cut the
FinFET's length by another half in the future. 

The new transistor could help extend the success of the electronics
industry, which has profited by making transistors ever smaller over the
past three decades and delivering cheaper, better and faster computer
"brains" for electronic products. 

Chip engineers have long held that the number of transistors on a chip will
double every 18 months. But scientists believed that the laws of physics
were going to stop that progress soon -- unless a design breakthrough like
that proposed by Hu proves practical. 

Hu said the FinFET prototype was successfully fabricated last July and
appeared to perform well. He said no patent had been taken out on the device. 

"We made the decision not to patent," Hu said. "We want the widest possible
usage. We hope this becomes a mainstream transistor structure in the future." 
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