IBM beat Intel in chip competition?

IBM took a big step forward in its race with Intel, creating chips that are smaller but faster with the project of making silicon transistors with a new material derived from a combination of many. rare metal.

At the same time in January 2007, both companies announced that they had discovered that special materials needed to make transistors not only helped to reduce energy consumption but also boosted performance. These special materials have better insulating capacity than silicon dioxide standards, a typical feature when extremely chip designers pay attention to help the transistors fit more on each processor.

Until now, both companies have not disclosed the components of this new mix of ingredients. However, researchers at IBM on February 26 revealed that they used Blue Gene supercomputer to model 50 mixtures of hafnium dioxide and basic silicon. The company plans to build electronic chips based on the new mix in 2008.

In theory, the new material seems perfect, but IBM engineers have had to create different mixes to avoid any surprises when they add semiconductor products, Alessandro. Curioni, a supercomputing expert at the Zurich Research Laboratory in Zurich, said. Curioni is one of three authors who published the study in a newspaper published in January.

The team used new algorithms and a Blue Gene / L supercomputer with 4,096 processors to speed up the numbers. This program takes 5 days to initialize the simulation with each of the materials, sampling the effect between independent elements for 600 atoms in each sample. For this study, if researchers use a regular notebook PC, this 250-day job will take up to 700 years.

Although IBM made great strides, Intel still affirmed its No. 1 position on the track with electronic chip products using its unique types of transistors. Intel plans to use this technology in a generation of 45-natometer chip technology that is expected to be released by the end of 2007.

Anh Thu