X-bit labs

December 2003 Hardware News Overview (page 2)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 12/19/2003 | 05:36 PM ]

The Celeron’s elder brother, Pentium M, is transitioning to the 90-nm Dothan core in the February of 2004. First samples work at 1.6-1.8GHz. The first 90-nm Ultra Low Voltage mobile processor, the Pentium M 1GHz, will appear around this time, too. It means that notebooks on the Centrino platform will work longer from the batteries, while Transmeta is up to hard times.

Other “big M” processors from Intel are looming ahead. The Madison-core Itanium 2 with a doubled L3 cache (9MB) is scheduled for 2004. Well, this is just a trifle compared to the dual-core 90nm Montecito with 24MB of the level 3 cache onboard. Interestingly, the Montecito was originally planned for 2007.

Well, it’s all natural: in spite of the periodically emerging problems, technologies are progressing. The above-mentioned progress is mostly due to the strained silicon technology employed in the 90-nm tech process. In 2007, Intel is intending to use polysilicon instead of metal as the material for the gate electrode, while the 1.2nm insulating layer of silicon dioxide will be changed for a 3nm layer of dielectric with much higher insulating properties. According to Intel, this will help to reduce dramatically the leakage current that has now become quite a problem in the industry.

That said, the company somehow managed to overcome the following problem (thanks to the metal gate?): when using high-k dielectrics today, the leakage current is reduced, but the operational current of the transistor is reduced, too, since the efficiency of the channel charging goes down. So, Intel promises us two-in-one: low leakage current and high operational current.

Taking the future at large, Intel seems to have chosen itself one: in the world of communications. November, Intel’s Craig Barrett said at his press conference that most of the company’s total R&D spending would go into this market sector. So the Centrino is just an initial milestone down a long road.

AMD doesn’t find anything useful about the Centrino’s wireless capabilities so far. Well, it’s easier to say Intel is fooling the market, when you can’t offer anything like that “foolishness” yourself. People who buy notebooks don’t think to agree with AMD. Added the ultimate Intel’s goal – control over the communications market – AMD may find itself in a desperate corner one of these years.

And I can’t even say AMD is feeling well today. The anticipated launch of 90nm processors never happened this year. Moreover, according to the latest news, it is not going to happen in the first half of the next year. Only the optimized 130nm version of Athlon 64 (Newcastle core) is awaited by then. That’s all. AMD confirmed this officially by telling in November that it’d be ready to manufacture 90nm processor in a couple of quarters. At its Dresden-located Fab30, of course.

November, the company decided at last where to build their new fab. There were two alternatives: Dresden’s outskirts where the Fab30 is located, and East Fishkill, New York, where an IBM fab is located. AMD has established close relationship with IBM, but they still preferred a time-tested variant – the Fab36 is to be erected in Germany in a couple of years. The Germans who have offered AMD credits for $1 billion must have managed to offer better terms and conditions than the Americans.