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Silicon wafer

Truthful breakthroughs in computing don't happen very often. When they do happen, what looks to the public like an out-of-the-blueish annunciation is actually the effect of years or even decades of piece of work. One company, Atomera, thinks it has adult a applied science that could exhale new life into older process nodes and give customers a reason to move to newer, faster, processes — and there'due south no reason its engineering science couldn't be extended to boost newer fries also.

Heading upwardly this endeavour to extend Moore's Law is Robert Mears, ane of the inventors of Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA), a critical method of amplifying optical signals in cobweb optic arrays without commencement converting those signals back into electricity. Atomera's invention, if successful, could significantly bear upon the future of computing past offering real improvements to diverse manufacturers without requiring them to move to smaller process nodes.

Why process nodes stick around

One of the major differences betwixt the various merchant foundries (GlobalFoundries, TSMC, Samsung, SMIC, UMC) and Intel is the process nodes they focus on. Intel has a fast-moving model that emphasizes moving to new nodes fairly quickly. It depends on the latest nodes for the majority of its revenue, and information technology transitions older plants to newer nodes on a fairly regular basis. This model has taken a chirapsia over the last few years, due to 14nm difficulties and the cancellation of 450mm wafers, but it's nevertheless the basic way that Intel does business. TSMC and its merchant foundry competitors, however, tend to derive significant amounts of acquirement from older hardware.

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TSMC's revenue by procedure node, Q1 2022

Continue in listen that this image is from Q1 2022, when 20nm was TSMC'southward leading-edge node. What it shows is that 39% of TSMC's acquirement is derived from process nodes that the company debuted 10 or more years ago (the foundry's 65nm semiconductor technology entered majority production in 2006). If you include 40/45nm, which launched eight years agone, that figure rises to 54%. When merchant foundries refer to long versus brusque nodes today, what they're referring to is a belief that sure nodes, like 28nm, volition proceed to exist important for years to come.

There are multiple reasons why companies settle on a specific procedure node. The benefits of smaller processes tend to be specific to certain kinds of processors. We normally talk nearly chips built on conventional CMOS, but at that place are other types of manufacturing — analog, MEMS, and RF, to name a few. Even devices built on CMOS may not do good from smaller nodes if, for example, they take a minimum pad size that a smaller node can't shrink.

Alternatively, fifty-fifty a conventional CMOS design may not do good from a dice shrink if the current product doesn't generate enough acquirement to pay for the new blueprint effort, or if the existing hardware is perceived equally capable of meeting existing needs. IoT devices don't necessarily demand to exist built on cut-edge silicon nodes, particularly if the hardware in question is selling for $fifty or less. These companies would benefit from better silicon technology, merely they may not be able to justify moving to a new node to get it. That'southward where Atomera's new technology could come in handy.

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How Atomera's technology works

Atomera's Mears Silicon Technology (MST) works past inserting a layer of oxygen in between the silicon lattice as the latter forms. Phone call information technology "squeezed silicon" (that's our name, not theirs) equally opposed to the well-known "strained silicon" technique for improving silicon's performance. Mears claims this lowers leakage and improves drive electric current, while simultaneously improving electron pigsty mobility. The full gains are estimated to be equivalent to a a half-node to full-node dice compress depending on the characteristics of the chip. The technology has been in evolution for over a decade, which is really pretty normal in semiconductor manufacturing.

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We've seen some bear witness that semiconductor companies are looking for ways to improve existing nodes rather than simply chasing after new ones. TSMC rolled out a new 28nm offer, 28HPC+, starting in 2022 — more three years later on its 28nm node had entered volume production. The explicit goal of 28HPC+ was to offering significant improvements compared with TSMC's older 28nm nodes (HP, LP, HPL, HPM) without requiring a die shrink. When Samsung began edifice 3D NAND, it appear that it would employ an older 40nm process for at least the kickoff few iterations of the production. The idea of improving nodes or taking advantage of older nodes isn't something unique to Atomera.

We spoke to Atomera and confirmed that the company is ready to motion beyond developing its technology and expects to announce some pregnant customers in the not-too-afar time to come. The visitor claims it can offer performance improvements equal to those that might be achieved by adopting 3-V semiconductors or moving to sub-10nm nodes, at a fraction of the cost — merely just if major fabs sign on. To date, none appear to have done so (EETimes notes that Atomera has won some legacy fabs, but doesn't state which they are).

Correct now, the semiconductor industry is trying to figure out which technologies will shape the future of adjacent-generation nodes. If Atomera tin demonstrate that its technology works on older products, it'll have a much stronger opportunity to sell into major silicon designs in the future. If EUV doesn't come online in the next few years, TSMC, GloFo, Samsung, and even Intel may all be hungry for a engineering science that lets them deliver a node worth of scaling without incurring massive boosted design costs. Atomera notwithstanding has to demonstrate that it represents a feasible route forrad — but pattern firms and companies across the silicon manufacture are looking for technology that would help them evangelize new improvements without breaking the bank.

Now read: What is silicon, and why are computer fries made from it?