PRESENTED BY-

ANAMIKA YADAV 01-ECE-08

A MICROCHIP (or an Integrated Circuit) is a set of interconnected electronic components such as transistors and resistors, that are etched or imprinted on a onto a tiny chip of a semiconducting material, such as silicon or germanium.

@According to Moore's law given by Gordan moore, cofounder of Intel corporation, on average, the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every 18month(2 year) and thus the transistor size will exponentially reduce. @This law has held true for quite some time, however, physical limits on how small a transistor can become has made adhering to the law more difficult.

@Major Factor that effect the microprocessor performance is the number of transistors fabricated on a single chip that in turn depends upon the transistor size. @Presently the fastest and best microprocessors in market employ 1 to 2 billion transistors per chip and has a 32nm technology i.e. transistor size(length) is 32nm @LIMITATIONS-As transistors get smaller and smaller, conventional transistors are subject to a problem called leakage. This means that when the transistor is in the "off" state, a small amount of current still flows through the channel. This leads to errors and drains power.

When a voltage is applied to the metal plate that forms the transistor's gate, a tiny strip of semiconductor material between the source and the drain changes from an insulator into a conductor, thereby turning the switch "on" and allowing current to flow from the source to the drain. When the voltage is removed, ideally the current stops flowing but in reality, trace amounts of current will constantly flow between the source and the drain.

 The

"leakage current" in a traditional transistor wastes precious power and becomes even more of a problem as transistors get smaller and more numerous.

There are two main ways to fix this problem: 1) reduce the leakage current, 2) force more electrons through that blue conductive strip. Intel's new design focuses on option 2. There are two ways to get more electrons through small channel: 1. Increase the amount of applied gate voltage so that the inversion layer will become even more electrically conductive. But more voltage means more power consumption. 2. Find a way to make the insulation layer bigger. A bigger insulation layer could accommodate more electrical current, and it would do it without requiring additional power.

Intel took the second approach, i.e. to make the insulation layer bigger and the chipmaker accomplished this by stretching the gate out into the third dimension. Until now transistors are produced in flat or planar or 2D structures akin to printing on a sheet of paper. Intels breakthrough involves producing more complex three dimensional (3D) tri gate transistors on chips.

 Intel's three-dimensional design has these same basic elements. But instead of being flat, the channel is a raised "fin" of silicon surrounded on three sides by the gate(thus tri-gate transistor

In the three-dimensional tri-gate transistor above, there's a lot of gate surface area in contact with the semiconductor material, so there's a lot more of that blue inversion layer for current to flow through. This makes the difference between the transistor's "on" and "off" states much larger, which means that the transistor can switch between states much faster while still producing a clear string of on and off. Basically we get higher speed at same power consumption or same amount of speed at much lower power consumption.

Intel claims that the 22nm tri-gate transistors switch between 18 and 37 percent faster than the 32nm planar ones (depending on the voltage level). The new design can reduce active power by up to 50 percent. It's also possible to make tri-gate transistors with more than one silicon channel connected to each gate in order to increase the amount of current that can flow through each transistor, enabling higher performance. Intel will build the new transistors upward, making it possible to squeeze in more transistors while maintaining density and a small chip size. The 3D structure allows Intel to build more contact areas on smaller transistors, which enables more current to flow. That is key to scaling transistor performance. The production of the three-dimensional transistors won't require any new manufacturing technologies. Extra etching steps will lead to a small production cost increase

The 32-nanometer transistor at left is used in Intels chips today; the companys new three-dimensional 22-nanometer transistor is at right. In the new transistor, gates intersect with silicon fins that stand up from the chips surface and interact with the gate on three sides