Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Wed 17 Jan 2007 01:48 PM PST
HP invents teeny tiny chips
(and life lessons)
Nanolicious! It's IT Blogwatch, in which HP invents a way of cramming much more on a chip. Not to mention more video life lessons for British nerds...
Hewlett-Packard Co. researchers may have figured out a way to prolong Moore's Law by making chips more powerful and less power-hungry. HP Labs today said it created a method of using a "crossbar switch" that more efficiently routes signals inside a common kind of chip called a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The technology could lead to the creation of chips packed with far more transistors on board, leading to faster computing times. HP calls its new technology field programmable nanowire interconnect (FPNI). The lab hopes to make an actual prototype chip using the technology within a year, and HP believes it could produce chips that contain a 15-nanometer crossbar by 2010.Paul Miller quips:HP is one of a host of companies developing ways to keep chip innovation moving along despite looming size barriers. The battle is to keep alive Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every 18 months. Moore's Law has been the driving force behind increasing computing speeds and the decreasing cost of electronics gear over the 40 years since it was coined by Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore.
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The research, by Greg Snider and Stan Williams at HP Labs, is in the Jan. 24 issue of Nanotechnology magazine.
Though we're guessing ink-jet cartridges are foremost on its mind, HP's new flexible circuits could make adaptable microchips possible at the consumer level ... Just like everything else new and hip these days, the new chips involve a few "nano" buzzwords, but instead of going for a full-on molecular computer like many current researchers are doing, HP is taking a bit of a hybrid approach.Mark LaPedus has more detail. Possibly too much. You decide:The new HP design uses a traditional silicon-based chip, with a mesh of nanowire switches on top. The nanowires ... allow it to adapt to tasks or be upgraded to a new wireless spec, but the silicon still does all the heavy lifting. Plus, the molecular switches don't draw any power except when switching from one state to another.
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The design is pretty much finished ... it sounds like these guys are well ahead of other molecular computing projects, and should provide a nice stopgap for expanding computer performance while we wait for full-on molecular processors.
Dan Gillmor's, uhhh, opinionated as ever:The researchers presented a ''conservative'' chip model using 15-nanometer-wide crossbar wires combined with 45-nm half-pitch CMOS, which they said they believe could be technologically viable by 2010. HP also used a model based on 4.5-nm-wide crossbar wires, which they said could be ready by 2020. The 4.5-nm crossbar architecture combined with 45-nm CMOS would yield a hybrid FPGA about 4 percent the size of a 45-nm CMOS-only FPGA. In this case, the clock speed will likely decrease, but so will energy per computation.
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Since conventional FPGAs use 80 to 90 percent of their CMOS for signal routing, the FPNI circuit is much more efficient; the density of transistors actually used for performing logic is much higher and the amount of electrical power required for signal routing is decreased, according to HP.
The other meaning of this is that even more than today, companies selling you goods with electronic circuitry will be the real owners. You may buy it, but they'll reserve the right to change the device after the sale in ways that may not be in your best interests.John Paczkowski worries about HP's lawbreaking:
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Businesses love the idea of turning things you can buy into things you must rent. When HP's technology and others like it are widespread, the things you thought you owned will stop working unless you pay more money. Watch out.
Hewlett Packard's broken another law, although this one's not likely to land it in hot water with federal authorities ... The company claims to have developed a new technology that will allow an eightfold increase in the number of transistors that can be squeezed onto a chip -- an advance that breaks the old axiom of Moore’s Law, which holds that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years.Joe Weisenthal grins:
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HP's approach ... is unique in that it increases chip performance not by reducing the size of the transistors, but by replacing the communication wires inside them with an overhead grid of tiny nanowires ... [HP is] expecting to see a high rate of [manufacturing] defects, but believe that can be compensated for by the ability of the circuitry to quickly route around the failed circuits.
Sounds pretty great. Just remember that term "adaptable circuitry", since it already seems bound to go down with a host of other technologies that will revolutionize the world, but are always a few years off. Others include: pharmacogenomics, fuel cells, black light power, nanotech and space elevators.
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