Advanced Micro Devices has begun to incorporate a form of strained silicon into its chips, a design twist that will let the company increase the performance of its processors.
The strained silicon is being incorporated into all of AMD’s 90-nanometer chips, which the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company has just started shipping to PC makers. The technology also will be added to 130-nanometer chips that will be released this quarter, an AMD representative said Thursday. (The nanometer dimensions refer to average feature size on the chips. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) Strained silicon is a design technique in which silicon atoms are forcibly pulled apart from each other. With the atoms spaced out further from one other, electrons can move more rapidly, similar to how a hockey puck can zip faster across a rink than across a frozen lake. Faster electrons lead to better performance.
Source: ZDNet
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