HP designs new chip layout

Author: Brett Thomas
Published: 17th January 2007
Comments (9) Stumble
HP designs new chip layout

Imagine eight times the power, and still in this little package. HP says it'll be there by 2010.

The chip industry has long been tied to Moore's Law. Ever since we really started to kick off binary-style silicon-based computing en masse, technology has roughly doubled every two years in speed and transistor count. However, it seems that for the first time we might have something that can truly break pattern enough to be called genuinely outside of Moore's Law - and it isn't even designed by a chip maker.

Some really smart guys over at HP have figured out a way to replace the current aluminum interconnects in chips with a thin nanowire grid that sits on top of them. Because of this, the transistors can be redistributed in a much more space-friendly format - allowing up to eight times the transistor count in the same die size.

Better yet, the technology should be completely feasible by 2010 and able to be integrated into current fabrication technologies. This means that the big chip designers like AMD and Intel won't need to pay for much more than the royalties for the technology. By Moore's Law, this jump shouldn't have happened until 2013.

The paper containing results from the study will be published in this month's Nanotechnology journal, and the industry is already sitting up to take notice. With the new method of design, it would be easily possible to create "zones" on a chip that can be turned on or off on the fly, thus reducing power consumption. It would also be possible to have redundancy built in, allowing multiple cores that would prevent a chip from being a waste if one transistor failed. The possibilities for use are endless, and the reduction in wiring and new space configuration means a savings in energy costs to boot even with the new power.

Most interesting of all is the fact that HP no longer is in the business of either chip production or design - the company gave it up years ago to head towards a more consumer-product design angle. However, if the technology turns out to be half the step forward it is purported to be, HP could end up as one of the most profitable companies in the chip design industry due to the potential royalties.

Have you got a thought on the leap forward? Let us know about it in our forums.
Quote Spaceraver 17th January 2007, 17:06
Uhm, that will be a big benefit, but that's way too far away to talk about yet.. And will computing not be a whole different ballgame by then??
Quote samkiller42 17th January 2007, 17:26
Now if i only owned HP, my bank acount would looks something similar like this:
100000000000000000000000000000000000000 ;)

Sam
Quote Mister_Tad 17th January 2007, 17:36
closer to 116500000000 actually

I suppose HP have lots of disused equipment from making their 9000 series server CPUs now that they've gone to Itaniums. I guess they carried on playing with them instead of flogging them off :D
Quote DXR_13KE 17th January 2007, 20:07
royalties..... crap..... more expensive chips here we come.
i will be updating my computer this year.
Quote perplekks45 17th January 2007, 20:33
If they're royalties are as overpriced as their current products we'll see CPUs hit the 250€ mark... for entry level CPUs.

Other than that: Awesome! 1W TDP anyone? :)
Quote ch424 17th January 2007, 21:18
Well, the article totally missed the point. If you read the /. article, it says they're talking about FPGAs - not standard ICs. All this new tech achieves is reducing the die size to gate count ratio on programmable logic.

8 times the current power in 2010 follows Moore's law pretty much exactly.

ch424
Quote TheoGeo 17th January 2007, 22:19
Quote:
Originally Posted by ch424
Well, the article totally missed the point. If you read the /. article, it says they're talking about FPGAs - not standard ICs. All this new tech achieves is reducing the die size to gate count ratio on programmable logic.

8 times the current power in 2010 follows Moore's law pretty much exactly.

ch424
your right about it being for FPGAs (Field programmable gate array) and not standard IC processors, but it would be 8 times the 2010 capacity and not 8 times the 2007 capacity so it would actually be beating moores law (at least for FPGAs).

plus
Quote:
Originally Posted by ITWire
According to the researchers, by 2020 using 4.5nm wires it should be possible to pack in the same amount of transistors in a space of just 4% of what is currently possible on a 45nm chip.
so that would make them even more compact, basicaly its making FPGAs performance closer to that of standard ICs.

so although its not very significant for us pc folk, it is significant for the industry.
Quote Da Dego 17th January 2007, 22:55
Quote:
Originally Posted by ch424
Well, the article totally missed the point. If you read the /. article, it says they're talking about FPGAs - not standard ICs. All this new tech achieves is reducing the die size to gate count ratio on programmable logic.

8 times the current power in 2010 follows Moore's law pretty much exactly.

ch424
ch424,

I see your point about the FPGAs, I'll look into this and possibly amend the article if there's need. But as for the 8 times the power in 2010, I think that's outside of Moore's law?

2007 = 1
2009 = 2
2011 = 4
2013 = 8

Double the power every 2 years. so to get 8x response out of anything in 3 is a bit outside of it. Maybe I'm not understanding something about your math? :)
Quote ch424 18th January 2007, 13:34
Sorry, I was wrong about Moore's Law, I don't know what I was thinking.

The Ars article and Slashdot comments are interesting though.

ch424
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