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IBM Claims 5nm Nanosheet Breakthrough
- ttul 9y agoQueue extreme UV lithography. Where the light source costs $100M, took 8,000 engineers 20 years to develop, and consumes 1MW of power to shine a 1kW beam. https://www.google.ca/amp/spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/leading-chipmakers-eye-euv-lithography-to-save-moores-law.amp.html https://www.google.ca/amp/spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/d...
- verandaguys_alt 9y agoProgress has to begin somewhere. In another 10 years, this kind of lithography will likely have evolved into something much more viable.
- Tuna-Fish 9y agoThe problem is that EUV was originally expected in 2007. It is already more than a decade late, and it still has issues.
- arcanus 9y agoAt this point isn't this basically a fab attached to a particle accelerator?
- the8472 9y agoThis uses tin plasma generated by laser pulses. No particle accelerators involved. One could build an EUV source based on a free electron laser too, which involves a particle accelerator, but I assume that has some limitations that make it less suitable for lithography.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- macawfish 9y agoHave you heard of Rayton Solar? They are supposedly slicing nanometer thin silicon with a particle accelerator. I don't know how hard it'd be to extend this to lithography though... Bill Nye the Science Guy is their PR person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8fKlfcA7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8fKlfcA7E
- kitd 9y agoFrom the Ars article a couple of days ago [1], it sounds like EUV improvements are actually at the core of the work announced here. [1] https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/06/ibm-5nm-chip/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/06/ibm-5nm-chip/
- ZenoArrow 9y agoJust FYI: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cue https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cue https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/queue https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/queue Same pronunciation, different meaning.
- altcognito 9y agoIf it is a short burst, perhaps 1MW is not a big deal?
- irixusr 9y agoYou can use a bank of capacitors and the power itself is not a huge deal (still not trivial, but it's been done for 60+ years). The problem is also that at 1kW for every 1Mw you still only use 0.1% of the energy you pumped in. And the energy requirements are still large because you are firing this thing repeatedly. Assuming the same amount of energy is required to ablate the atoms as with conventional UV (I'm not in the field, but its probably not a bad assumption), you have to multiply the ratio of the efficiencies of both methods to get at the energy required. Could be several multiples more if not an order of magnitude. Also where does the remaining 999kW go? Eventually heat, so you have to spend 2Mw more to cool it (assuming 50% AC efficiency, I guess you could pump cold water instead). Add in the energy costs of opening and closing a vacuum lock and this is a fun project to be working on :D
- bharath28 9y agoRelated discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14485960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14485960
- cbryn 9y agoActually most nodes are phasing out EUV lithography research and moving to plasma-enhanced lithography. Pretty sure you can't really go below 15nm without PECVD/Plasma enhanced etch steps.
- thomasstephn 9y agoGetting close to quantum mechanics problems... https://youtu.be/rtI5wRyHpTg https://youtu.be/rtI5wRyHpTg
- cowmix 9y agoWhy is IBM still making all these breakthroughs? I thought they got out of the chip business.
- losteric 9y agopatent licensing?
- amackera 9y agoNot even close. They still help design, test, and fabricate a huge number of high performance ASICs.
- cptskippy 9y agoThey left the semiconductor manufacturing business. That's a different segment. The lithographic tools and the technology used to make those tools are both different market segments that IBM is involved in.
- orbifold 9y agoThey haven't gotten out of research in the Area at all, their labs are still among the leading ones in many different subareas (the director of the Zurich Lab gave a talk at my University just recently). They also continue to develop both their Power 9 and Mainframe processors.
- TallGuyShort 9y agoThis is a few years old now, but sharing to illustrate that they've done some really cool stuff in that space: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/38653.wss http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/38653.wss.
- dredmorbius 9y agoIBM -- backs the current Fascist Puppet. Aided the Holocaust. http://exposingpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2015/07/ibm-and-holocaust-takes-you-through.html http://exposingpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2015/07/ibm-and-holoc...
- sctb 9y ago> Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dredmorbius 9y agoSometimes the message is simply that "never again" must be repeated. Because it is otherwise forgotten. IBM appears to be forgetting, or be actively suppressing, this lesson. https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed/on-holocaust-remembrance-day-assessing-never-again https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed/on-holocaust-remembrance-day-...