AMD boasts 25% faster transistors breakthrough

CHIP ARCHITECTS from AMD showed off future technology at a semiconductor forum in Japan today.

AMD announced the technology at the VLSI Symposium being held in Kyoto this week.

It said that it has showed technology for transistors using depleted silicon on insulator (SoI) technology which will provide a 30 per cent increase on speeds using current technology.

The firm also showed another set of transistors which use strained silicon and metal gate to create a different type of transistor intended to give up to a 25% boost on conventional devices using strained silicon.

Craig Sander, the VP of process technology at AMD, claimed that these type of semiconductor advances will mean much faster microprocessors when the firm, with the aid of its R&D partner IBM, move to chip line sizes of 65 nanometers.

The trannies AMD showed off use nickel silicide rather than polysilicon to create metal gates within the structure of the semiconductor. The gates switch on and off electricity flowing through the devices.

You can find the slides of the presentation here. µ