AMD achieves fast switching speeds

DECEMBER 4--AMD (Sunnyvale, CA; www.amd.com) has built a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistor that reportedly achieves the fastest switching speeds yet in the semiconductor industry. The company has developed a device with a 15-nm gate length (0.015 μm), a prototype for the transistors that it plans to use to power future generations of microprocessors.

This development heralds the capability for a twentyfold increase in the number of transistors per chip and a tenfold increase in microprocessor performance by the end of the decade. AMD will disclose its research in a paper to be presented today in Washington, DC, at the 2001 International Electron Devices Meeting.

The transistor, devised in the AMD Submicron Development Center, is a CMOS-based, 0.8-V device, designed to handle switching speeds of 0.3-ps, or 3.33 trillion switches per second. The development of the 15-nm transistor is a powerful indicator that transistor scaling will continue unabated for many years to come.

AMD's 15-nm device is a prototype that is key to the development of its 30-nm process generation, which the company plans to have in production by approximately 2009.