Dec 11 2009

Intel: A research whore

CATEGORY: Hardware | GAME: - none By Panga

nVidia can do all the mudslinging at Intel for being evil at business and stuff, but when it comes to reseach, Intel seems to take the whole cake these days and this time it is no different.

As you might all be aware, as the compactness of the processor die and the resulting transistor density is increasing, the developers were fast reaching a bottleneck, both in terms of switching speed and energy leakages.

Now in comes the Intel Turbo-Charging Transistors. These transistors unlike its daddy, isn't simply silicon anymore, but is a products of additions elements: indium, gallium & arsenic. Even though this has marked a remarkable performance boost but this has created a hurdle of fabricating wafers & their due processing more complicated. 

If you want to read up more of the development of compound semiconductors, which led to this point, you can read the blogs of Mike Mayberry, who is the Director of Components Research @ Intel:

Enforcing Moore's Law Through Technology Research - August 20, 2007

Enforcing Moore's Law Through Technology Research (Part 2) - September 15, 2008

Enforcing Moore's Law Through Technology Research (Part 3) - December 07, 2009