Intel building factory which will create 13Nm processors

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Intel Corporation today announced plans to invest more than $5 billion to build a new chip manufacturing facility at its site in Chandler, Ariz. The announcement was made by Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini during a visit by President Barack Obama at an Intel facility in Hillsboro, Ore.

The new Arizona factory, designated Fab 42, will be the most advanced, high-volume semiconductor manufacturing facility in the world. Construction of the new fab is expected to begin in the middle of this year and is expected to be completed in 2013.



“The investment positions our manufacturing network for future growth,” said Brian Krzanich, senior vice president and general manager, Manufacturing and Supply Chain. “This fab will begin operations on a process that will allow us to create transistors with a minimum feature size of 14 nanometers."

Building the new fab on the leading-edge 14-nanometer process enables Intel to manufacture more powerful and efficient computer chips. The nanometer specification refers to the minimum dimensions of transistor technology. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter or the size one ninety-thousandth the width of an average human hair.

“The products based on these leading-edge chips will give consumers unprecedented levels of performance and power efficiency across a range of computing devices from high-end servers to ultra-sleek portable devices,” said Krzanich

Fab 42 will be built as a 300mm factory, which refers to the size of the wafers that contain the computer chips.

@Arman, use an automated satellite guided system which takes into account the positioning of all the other vehicles . no need for a driver to actually interact with what could be automated. the technology exists, and if people still would like to drive conventionally they could do it in an area designed for it. who wants to drive to work or where ever when you could travel and be reading over something, on a laptop or anything at the same time?

@Arman, use an automated satellite guided system which takes into account the positioning of all the other vehicles . no need for a driver to actually interact with what could be automated. the technology exists, and if people still would like to drive conventionally they could do it in an area designed for it. who wants to drive to work or where ever when you could travel and be reading over something, on a laptop or anything at the same time?

@Chronos, sad to see lots of materials being used for the sake of cyclical consumption. a better processor is a good thing, but the current way things are going does our planets resources no favours. we need to think more rationally and design things to last longer, be more multi-functional and more recyclable.

check out greenpeaces site for an idea of how "green" electronics are.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international ... ectronics/

off to bed. good night people

Eh... Lets get self-driving vehicles working in two dimensions before we complicate things with a third dimension.

I think the only sad thing about this is the computer I'm about to upgrade to will soon be obsolete.

Smaller semiconductor devices are made for the sake of greater efficiency in
terms of computing and power consumption.

The smaller you can make these devices, the less material you have to use and the less power they require.

This is true. there is also a new thing being released to replace BIOS that uses considerably less energy.

it would also help if parts were designed to be more modular, say for like a TV or washing machine for example. it is often more expensive to repair than to replace. modular parts = less materials needed in the long term,.

sure hope they dont end up messing up the specs... if the guys working on the graphene wafers and chips make them commercially available hooooly crap.

On 13 April 2005, Gordon Moore stated in an interview that the law cannot be sustained indefinitely: "It can't continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens." He also noted that transistors would eventually reach the limits of miniaturization at atomic levels:

In terms of size [of transistors] you can see that we're approaching the size of atoms which is a fundamental barrier, but it'll be two or three generations before we get that far—but that's as far out as we've ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit. By then they'll be able to make bigger chips and have transistor budgets in the billions.[54]

In January 1995, the Digital Alpha 21164 microprocessor had 9.3 million transistors. This 64-bit processor was a technological spearhead at the time, even if the circuit’s market share remained average. Six years later, a state of the art microprocessor contained more than 40 million transistors. It is theorised that with further miniaturisation, by 2015 these processors should contain more than 15 billion transistors, and by 2020 will be in molecular scale production, where each molecule can be individually positioned.[55]

In 2003 Intel predicted the end would come between 2013 and 2018 with 16 nanometer manufacturing processes and 5 nanometer gates, due to quantum tunnelling, although others suggested chips could just get bigger, or become layered.[56] In 2008 it was noted that for the last 30 years it has been predicted that Moore's law would last at least another decade.[49]

Some see the limits of the law as being far in the distant future. Lawrence Krauss and Glenn D. Starkman announced an ultimate limit of around 600 years in their paper,[57] based on rigorous estimation of total information-processing capacity of any system in the Universe.

One could also limit the theoretical performance of a rather practical "ultimate laptop" with a mass of one kilogram and a volume of one litre. This is done by considering of the speed of light, the quantum scale, the gravitational constant and the Boltzmann constant.[58]

Then again, the law has often met obstacles that first appeared insurmountable but were indeed surmounted before long. In that sense, Moore says he now sees his law as more beautiful than he had realized: "Moore's law is a violation of Murphy's law. Everything gets better and better."[59]

i thought the smaller chips were limited by lithography not by the material. Graphene would have better thermal properties so maybe they will use it however I am interested will they use imprint or classical UV lithography.