| September 29, 1997 |
Faster PowerPC Chips?
IBM's copper circuitry may yield smaller, cheaper chips that use less power
By
Tom Davey
IBM has discovered how to use copper for the circuitry on silicon wafers, which lets it produce smaller, cheaper chips that use less
power, the company says. The reason is that copper conducts electricity better than aluminum, the metal currently used for circuits in all chip-making.
A Step Ahead
IBM says its copper process can be used to manufacture all types
of chips, including microprocessors, memory, and so-called application-specific circuitry that is used in products ranging from cellular phones to antilock brakes. First up will be a new PowerPC chip using the copper process, dubbed CMOS 7S, which IBM expects to deliver in the first half of next year. That chip will initially be used in high-end servers, says an IBM spokesman. IBM's RS/6000 and AS/400 servers use the P
owerPC. The other major computer maker that uses the PowerPC is Apple Computer.
IBM also estimates the technology will reduce the manufacturing cost of chips by 20% to 30%. But because the cost of the chip is only a relatively small portion of the cost of a computer, that won't make much difference to the overall cost of systems.
Intel's Move
Ron Dornseif, a principal an
alyst at Dataquest Inc., downplays the importance of the IBM announcement. "It is insignificant to the marketplace," though the technology trend is important, he says. "This allows us to stay on Moore's law," he adds. Moore's law, a maxim devised in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, says that the performance of chips doubles every 18 months.
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