Basic transistor flaw could hobble chip design
Summary
Topics
Researchers at the US National Institute of Science and Technology have warned that a flaw exists in transistor noise models which could fundamentally affect the efficiency of future chips.
The elastic tunneling model predicts that as transistors get smaller, electronic noise within the transitors, which can cause erratic on-off states, should increase. However, a team of Nist scientists, who have been exploring nano-scale transistor behavior, have found that transistor noise does not increase as transistors are scaled down.
"This implies that the theory explaining the effect must be wrong," said Jason Campbell, who lead the research, in a statement. "The model was a good working theory when transistors were large, but our observations clearly indicate that it's incorrect at the smaller nanoscale regimes where industry is headed."
The team also discovered that as less energy is pushed through nano-transistors, transistor noise increases. This could spell trouble for low-energy chips, which are being explored for use in devices including laptops and phones.
"This is a real bottleneck in our development of transistors for low-power applications," said Campbell. "We have to understand the problem before we can fix it — and troublingly, we don't know what's actually happening."
Campbell credits fellow Nist researcher KP Cheung with first identifying a possible problem with the elastic tunnelling model. Researchers from the University of Maryland College Park, and Rutgers University, also contributed to the team's work.
The researchers gave a presentation of some of their findings at an IEEE event last week. The team's initial results were published in a paper entitled The Origin of Random Telegraph Noise in Highly Scaled nMOSFETs in February.
This article was originally posted on ZDNet UK.
Talkback Most Recent of 7 Talkback(s)
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Nist?
Since when does an acronym become a word? The article throughout uses "Nist" instead of "NIST" and that just seems wrong.
DarkAsteroid29th May 2009 -
UK School of Editing
Acronyms in the UK press are always initial cap then lower case. NASA becomes Nasa. It's just a stylistic difference. Check out BBC.co.uk for more.
MichaelJMotal31st May 2009 -
Uk
You mean Bbc.co.Uk?
EMonkIA3rd Jun 2009 -
RE: Basic transistor flaw could hobble chip design
Obviously the diametric flow of the transistors' compulsion modules are being chopped into negative intervals, thereby reversing frequency singularities by 3,000%. Gravitizing the tunnel layers should keep electrons uniform allowing you drop some ******* and wet your whick. Knuckleheads.
kwazi630th May 2009 -
Re: UK School of Editing
Following that logic, shouldn't US be Us, and UK be Uk, and BBC be Bbc?
steve@...1st Jun 2009 -
No
Nist, Nasa etc are spoken as words, rather than as individual letters.
The convention in UK English is that if it is spoken as a word then only the first letter is capitalised, if it's said as individual letters then all are capitalised, unless the "owner" has through use in their own literature or other publication indicated an alternate convention.
For example
Nasa - spoken as a word, so first letter capitalised
USA - spoken as individual letters, so all are capitalised
UNICEF - spoken as a single word, but was all capitalised in the organisation's original literature and documents, so the "owner's" convention overrides the UK English standard one
alec.wood@...3rd Jun 2009 -
RE: Basic transistor flaw could hobble chip design
I think any wanker worried about the grammar is missing the point.
I think electrons would be more uniform if you use gold nano-tubes as well, because they can be rolled smaller and thinner with electricity.
Really, I think that transistors should probably go the way of the 8-track and somebody should be investing time and money into organic solutions that achieve the same sustainability at lower cost and that would easily be smaller by nature.
compternerd@...3rd Jun 2009
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