IBM has built the world's fastest silicon-based transistor, a basic building block used to make microchips.
IBM expects the new transistor will result in communications chips at speeds of 100 GigaHertz (GHz) within two years -- five times faster and four years sooner than recently-announced competitive approaches.
The transistor uses a modified design and IBM's silicon germanium (SiGe) technology to reach speeds of 210 GHz while drawing just a milliamp of electrical current. This represents an 80 percent performance improvement and a 50 percent reduction in power consumption over current designs.
"Just as aircraft were once believed incapable of breaking an imaginary sound barrier, silicon-based transistors were once thought incapable of breaking a 200GHz speed barrier,'' said Bernard Meyerson, IBM fellow and vice president, IBM Communications Research and Development Center. "Makers of high performance electronics like networking gear are no longer forced to use chips made of exotic and expensive materials to reach these speeds. Silicon's future is safe as the preferred medium for chip-making.''
Transistor speeds are largely determined by how quickly electricity passes through them. This is dependent on the material the transistor is made of and the distance electricity must travel through it. Standard transistors are made of ordinary silicon. In 1989, IBM introduced an improvement to the basic silicon material by adding germanium to speed the electrical flow, improving performance and reducing power consumption.
With this latest achievement, IBM is combining the use of the SiGe material with an improved transistor design that shortens the electrical path to speed up the device.
In standard transistors, electricity travels horizontally, so shortening the path requires that the transistor be made thinner -- an increasingly difficult task with diminishing returns using today's chip manufacturing techniques. The IBM SiGe device is called a "heterojunction bipolar transistor," an alternate transistor design in which electrical flow is vertical. In IBM's SiGe manufacturing process, the height of the transistor is more easily reduced by thinning the SiGe layer, shortening the path of electrical flow and improving performance.
IBM expects the new transistor will result in communications chips at speeds of 100 GigaHertz (GHz) within two years -- five times faster and four years sooner than recently-announced competitive approaches.
The transistor uses a modified design and IBM's silicon germanium (SiGe) technology to reach speeds of 210 GHz while drawing just a milliamp of electrical current. This represents an 80 percent performance improvement and a 50 percent reduction in power consumption over current designs.
"Just as aircraft were once believed incapable of breaking an imaginary sound barrier, silicon-based transistors were once thought incapable of breaking a 200GHz speed barrier,'' said Bernard Meyerson, IBM fellow and vice president, IBM Communications Research and Development Center. "Makers of high performance electronics like networking gear are no longer forced to use chips made of exotic and expensive materials to reach these speeds. Silicon's future is safe as the preferred medium for chip-making.''
Transistor speeds are largely determined by how quickly electricity passes through them. This is dependent on the material the transistor is made of and the distance electricity must travel through it. Standard transistors are made of ordinary silicon. In 1989, IBM introduced an improvement to the basic silicon material by adding germanium to speed the electrical flow, improving performance and reducing power consumption.
With this latest achievement, IBM is combining the use of the SiGe material with an improved transistor design that shortens the electrical path to speed up the device.
In standard transistors, electricity travels horizontally, so shortening the path requires that the transistor be made thinner -- an increasingly difficult task with diminishing returns using today's chip manufacturing techniques. The IBM SiGe device is called a "heterojunction bipolar transistor," an alternate transistor design in which electrical flow is vertical. In IBM's SiGe manufacturing process, the height of the transistor is more easily reduced by thinning the SiGe layer, shortening the path of electrical flow and improving performance.
