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IBM develops process to make chip up to 30pc faster

NEW YORK: International Business Machines Corp. said on Monday it developed a process to make microchips up to 30 percent faster, paving the way for faster Internet access and increasingly powerful wireless phones and other devices.

IBM's new production method uses an advanced insulation material - a low-k dielectric - that protects the millions of individual copper circuits on a chip. That's crucial because designers must crowd smaller and smaller transistors and wiring on the chip to make it faster. Under such conditions, without proper insulation, "cross-talk" or interference can occur, which creates performance problems.

With the new process, chips will function with wires as close as 0.13 micron, compared with 0.25 micron for the majority of chips now produced.

But to achieve the 0.13 micron level, a new insulation process had to be developed because the silicon dioxide, or glass, insulation material used in the industry for about 30 years doesn't work under such conditions, IBM said.

"Every 50 years or 100 years in the world, something major comes along and changes the world forever. This is one of those very, very big things," John Kelly, general manager of IBM Microelectronics, said in an interview.

IBM has developed a proprietary technique to build chips using silk, a low-k dielectric material that is commercially available from the Dow Chemical Co. Other materials and tooling are generally available and help make it the first viable low-k process for copper chip fabrication, IBM said.

"It is an absolutely essential process without which you couldn't continue making both the Internet and its devices more powerful and capable," Bijan Davari, vice president of IBM Microelectronics' Semiconductor Research & Development Centre, said in an interview.

In 1997, IBM was the first company to begin making computer chips with copper wires, instead of aluminum, which had been the industry mainstay. Copper is better at conducting electricity, and thus makes chips run about 20-30 percent faster. By using the new insulation process, another 20-30 percent gain in performance is possible, Kelly said.

"The breakthrough here is being able to manufacture chips with both copper interconnects and a very low-k dielectrics. I don't know anybody else who is as close in doing the same thing," said Keith Diefendorff, editor-in-chief of the Microprocessor Report, an industry publication.

While there was agreement that the announcement put IBM ahead of its competitors, there were differing opinions of just how far ahead Big Blue was.

Diefendorff estimated that the low-k announcement puts IBM six to 12 months ahead of its competition.

But Risto Puhakka, vice president of operations at VLSI Research, a market research firm, estimated IBM was about three months ahead of its competitors, who are also very close to developing their own technology, he said.

Kelly said the process would "help IBM maintain a one- to two-year lead over the rest of the industry.

The new insulation technology will initially be used in high-performance computers and communications equipment, such as those used to power the Internet. But within the next year or two, the chips will find their way into other devices such as cellular phones, Kelly said.

A design kit, called Cu-11, which includes software design tools and services, will be available in July for customers who want to build customised chips that can run high-performance Internet servers, power-saving cellular telephones and advanced network communications gear.

The Cu-11 should further strengthen IBM's position as a leading worldwide ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) supplier, IBM said.

According to 1999 market-share figures from Dataquest, IBM ranked as the No. 1 worldwide supplier of standard-cell ASICs, for both their internal and external uses, up from its No. 2 position the previous year. In 1998, Lucent Technologies Inc. was No. 1, Dataquest said.

No one else is using copper wiring and low-k dielectric, said Jordan Selburn, principal analyst with Dataquest, a division of the Gartner Group Inc. "IBM is really the one with all the pieces," Selburn said.

IBM is already producing chips using its new low-k process on a pilot production line in Fishkill, N.Y. It plans to start chip production on its high-volume Burlington, Vt. manufacturing lines in the first half of 2001.

The chips will be used to produce future generations of the IBM Power4 processor, which is intended for use in its RS/6000 and AS/400 computer servers.-Reuters