July 16, 2012
The fight to keep Moore’s Law alive has been stacked with physical limitations. Fittingly, Technology Review published an article on Friday the 13th, discussing the behind-schedule technology required to manufacture the next generation chips. Known as extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), the process was expected to fabricate 22-nanometer chips on the market today. Unfortunately that didn’t pan out, leaving the silicon to be manufactured by tweaking the aging process of standard lithography.
The problem has prompted Intel to invest a sum of $4 billion into ASML, a Dutch company that makes the equipment used to fabricate chips. Both Intel and ASML are trying to get large chipmakers to join an effort keeping silicon alive. While the tweaked version of lithography has been used to manufacture 22-nanometer chips, this process is only viable for the next two generations. The stopgap solution should cover the creation of 14 and 11 nanometer chips, which is expected to suffice until 2013.
After that, the only process expected to keep Moore’s law going is EUV. While current lithography employs 193-nanometer ultraviolet light to makes chips, EUV uses higher energy UV rays with wavelengths around 13 nanometers. The process involves writing a pattern into a chemical layer on top of a silicon wafer. The layer is then etched into the silicon using a chemical process. Unfortunately, the technology is not yet feasible for a production environment.
A main roadblock to EUV technology is the need for powerful light sources. Because the wavelength is so short,, it gets absorbed by all types of matter. The EUV machines attempt to alleviate this issue by passing the beam through a vacuum, but it becomes too weak by the time it hits the silicon wafer. Changing the direction and focus of the light has been tried, but ends in similar results.
At this point, ASML’s most advanced EUV prototype can generate beams only half as strong as chipmakers required to make the process viable. The company and Intel are investing in second-generation EUV, but the money is also being used get the first-generation technology working. ASML spokesman Ryan Young expressed the urgency about getting EUV off the ground, saying, "Clearly, there is no next generation if we don't get this generation working."
Full story at Technology Review
There are 0 discussion items posted.
Join the Discussion |
In a report published this week, researchers documented that GPU-equipped supercomputers enabled application speedups between 1.4x and 6.1x across a range of well-known science codes. While those results aren't the order of magnitude performance increases that were being bandied about in the early days of GPU computing, the researchers were encouraged that the technology is producing consistently good results with some of the most popular HPC science applications in the world.
Read more...
Intel Corporation has acquired Whamcloud, a startup devoted to supporting the open source Lustre parallel file system and its user community. The deal marks the latest in a line of high performance computing acquisitions that Intel has made over the past few years to expand its HPC footprint.
Read more...
Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and Whamcloud have been awarded tens of millions of dollars by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to kick-start research and development required to build exascale supercomputers. The work will be performed under the FastForward program, a joint effort run by the DOE Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that will focus on developing future hardware and software technologies capable of supporting such machines.
Read more...
06/25/2012 | NetApp | A single hour of data collection can result in 7+ million files from just one camera. Collection opportunities are limited and must be successful every time. As defense and intelligence agencies seek to use the data collected to make mission-critical battlefield decisions, there’s greater emphasis on smart data and imagery collection, capture, storage and analysis to drive real-time intelligence. The data gathered must accurately and systematically be analyzed, integrated and disseminated to those who need it – troops on the ground. This reality leads to an inevitable challenge – warfighters swimming in sensors, drowning in data. With the millions, if not billions, of sensors providing all-seeing reports of the combat environment, managing the overload demands a file system and storage infrastructure that scales and performs while protecting the data collected. Part II of our whitepaper series highlights NetApp’s scalable, modular, and flexible storage solution to handle the demanding requirements of sophisticated ISR environments.
Join Michael for a look at the first PGI Accelerator Fortran and C compilers to include comprehensive support for OpenACC, the new open standard for programming accelerators using compiler directives.