Intel will begin high-volume manufacturing of chips featuring the world's first three-dimensional transistor, the company said Wednesday. "The gains these transistors provide are really unprecedented, said Bill Holt, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's technology Manufacturing Group at a press conference in San Francisco.
Intel will introduce its 3D transistor design, called Tri-Gate, as it transitions to its next-generation, 22-nanometer silicon manufacturing process at the end of this year and through 2012, Holt said. Tri-Gate transistors will be used in all of Intel's product lines, from high-end server chips to the tiny, low-power processors that go into mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
The first 22nm chips are codenamed Ivy Bridge and are set for high-volume production before the end of 2011. Intel demonstrated working Ivy Bridge chips in a notebook, desktop and server at the San Francisco event.
What's a 3D transistor?
Tri-Gate transistors form conducting channels on three sides of a vertical "fin" structure, a major advance from the planar design of transistors in use for the past 50 years, the company said. (Planar transistors work in two dimensions.) The three-dimensional structure of the next-generation transistors allows chips to operate at lower voltage with lower leakage.
In other words, the electrons go "up, left, and down," said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager for the Intel Architecture Group, at an event in San Francisco Wednesday. Read More
