Intel reinvents the transistor as a 3D Tri-Gate | Hacker News Reader

Intel reinvents the transistor as a 3D Tri-Gate

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54 pointsbzupnick21 comments

I found the information about the size of the 3d transistors interesting. Does this mean that Intel is currently able to develop and manufacture nanotechnology devices (1 to 100 nanometres)?

For example, in the video the red blood cell was much larger than the 3d transistors. If Intel is able to develop transistors which are on the same scale as small theoretic nanotechnology devices, why aren't we getting access to a lot of nanotechnology applications yet?

For example these nanotechnology applications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nanotechnology_applicat...

intel provided the ability for someone else to create it. intel does chips, people take those chips, and make great things. intel doesnt do that. its up to us now, lol

It's been possible to make structures that small for quite awhile actually, but the applications are just a lot harder to realize than anyone expected in the early days.

Even as an undergraduate back in 2005, I was fairly easily making ~50nm structures with interference lithography and the equipment wasn't even that expensive. One day that technology should be useful for filtration, quantum dots, and such from the list you linked.

Edit: Fixed typo

You have to keep in mind that "nanotechnology" as a concept is not that useful in outlining applications and how they're engineered. You could equally well define refrigerators, wheels, motor vehicles and chairs as "macrotechnology," right? But that's not giving you any insight into the problems that are being solved.

There will be some areas of research where Intel's photolithography improvements are relevant and others where they're completely orthogonal, like repairing human tissue. That's just how these things go. :)

I work at Texas Instruments, and the fab I'm in does a 32nm process. The problem is the methods used to make microchips vs mechanical working parts would be vastly different.

If you were to make a gear at 22nm then blow it up to say 5 inches wide, it would be the most terribly machined gear you ever saw. Heck it might look like a roughly notched rock. Precision has to be refined at this level to make complicated nano technology

You have to understand just how these chips are made. You start with a wafer, send it to thin films cover it in a uv resistant coating affectionately named photo resist, send it to photo lithography, expose it to uv light through a precision laser etched crystal reticle to overlay a schematic design for the bottom layer of the chip, then you ash the wafer to remove all the parts of the photo resist that the UV light did or didn't soften/harden (there are positive and negative photo resist types) then send it to implant and implant materials such as boron, phosphorus and other materials that will change the electrical properties of the wafer where implanted, then UV expose again, ash it, now yo have the bottom the wafer is annealed to bring the implanted particles to the top. Sometimes there is etching before any of this happens. Then you build the wires above the silicon connecting all the parts, and sometimes growing silicon in upper layers just to add more parts to the circuitry. All through the use of etching(plasma, acid and others), photographically, ashing among other things and there are many many quality checks along the way just to make sure everything is going well. (no reason to waste a month of process time on a chip that won't work because of something that happened at the beginning of the processing. Basically everything is done in layers. It can take months for chips to go from silicon to shippable chips. I suppose you might be able to build mechanical object with photo-lithography and I'm sure it has been done, but until processes are refined to where the objects don't look as rough under a microscope as they do, then I don't think it is very feasible.

Edit: On another note, now that we're able to make 22nm chips, by using the same process we should be able to produce larger nano objects with greater precision, like say 100-200nm. But as for 22nm precision, it's going to take a while to get machine shop quality parts when scaled to large size at the 22nm size.

I can relate relate to the thickness of a hair but I can't relate to the size of a red blood cell so... If Mr Bohr ia an average sized 1.8 metres tall and is only a little smaller than the diameter of the hair after the first shrinkage that means that after the second shrinkage where he's 100 nm tall that the hair is about 1000 times wider than that. I calculate it would take him a good 20 minutes to walk past the end of the hair and in his world this chip is about the size of a pool table

At 1:31 it shows a far away shot of him, the hair and the chip. Before he's shrunk to his final size the chip is already about the size of a large building. Do you mean the transistor is about the size of a pool table?

Sorry, yes, that was what I should have wrote

This video is a serious contender to Microsoft's Windows 7 House Party ad and their Songsmith ad.

add.: why does everyone hanging around here have a stick or two up their wazoo? Not a soul will fail to notice how truly ridiculous this video is in the same lovely way the Songsmith ad is, but why is one not allowed to mention this in jest without getting slammed over it? Breathtaking... :)

You quoted funny as if I shouldn't find it funny, but when that shrink ray blew up...

Thanks for the spoiler.

Don't read the comments if you don't want to know what's on the linked page.

You're joking, right? A sizeable number of people here on HN read the comments before reading the item, partly because the comments often have more information than the item, and partly because the title is often less of a guide to the quality than the comments. I always check the comments first, not least, in addition to the above, they usually load faster.

Wow, I thought you were being ironic when you mentioned the spoiler...

I was being sarcastic. The spoiler really did spoil the joke, although the joke was such a minor part that it didn't matter very much. The point remains.

Many people read the HN comments before the submission, and the spoiler, well, spoilt it.

If you read the comments, it's unreasonable to complain about their having content from the video. The point of the comments is for people who've seen it to comment on it; if they're incidentally helpful to you without watching the video, that's fine, but don't expect people not to spoil things.

Well, that's one point of view, but the ancestor comment to this, the original one to which I replied, contains no information at all except to spoil the one joke in the clip. It's content-free, except to be a spoiler.

And it spoilt it. For no value.

And that's my point. If it had also contained some actual value then I'd've shrugged and not minded.

No doubt I won't persuade you, so I'll stop now.

Even Apple's hastily thrown together tour of their antenna facility was sexier than this. Wow.

I've never seen someone so awkward in front of a green screen before.

Fancy a geek being awkward in front of a camera :)

Actually I thought he was fine

I really enjoyed it, I don't think he was awkwards either, but that he's older and see's this video kinda thingamajig different to us whippersnappers.

I watched it all, and I learnt a lot from it. I'd've not watched a dry/marketing video on a new processor technology.

I thought it was great. The guy clearly stayed within his personality and explained things clearly. How sexy do you want 3d transistors to be?

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