Transistors, the building blocks of microprocessors, may have only one place to go in the future according to Intel researchers: up. At a presentation in Japan this week, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker plans to unveil more technical details behind its Tri-Gate transistor, an experimental circuit that could become a crucial element in the company's efforts to continue to follow Moore's Law by making smaller and faster chips.
As the name suggests, Tri-Gate transistors differ from current technology in that they have three gates rather than one, said Gerald Marcyk, director of components research at Intel. As a result, they behave more like three-dimensional objects. Transistor gates essentially control the flow of electrons between two structures inside a transistor called the source and the drain. Letting electrons pass, or impeding their movement, creates the ones and zeros that are essential to computing. Increasing the number of transistor gates increases the amount of current that can be handled, and that boosts performance, said Marcyk, who is presenting a paper on the technology at the International Solid State Device and Materials Conference in Nagoya, Japan.
More importantly, Tri-Gates will cut down on leakage, or inadvertently dissipated electricity, because the required current can be diverted into three channels. Transistor gates right now are only a few atoms thick and a substantial amount of electricity slips away in transmission, a problem that will get worse as chip building blocks shrink.
News source: C|Net
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