Almost, all the major chipmakers have started producing chips using 45nm process, except AMD, who is struggling to start the 45nm manufacturing process and plans to ship the first 45nm chip later this year. Now the race to further shrink the processor has already started, Intel and IBM are planning to move to 32nm technology in second half of next year. But IBM plans to one up on Intel, as it has developed technology that will help the company to quickly transition to 22nm process.
IBM says that the lithography techniques used in 45nm and 32 nm chip manufacturing will be obsolete and it won’t be useful to produce 22nm chips. The company says it has developed a new technology called Computational Scaling, which it will use to make 22nm processors. The technology uses mathematical computation and software to manipulate the shapes of the masks and the illuminating source during the etching process. The Computational Scaling technology can use the present manufacturing equipment and hence IBM will not have to radically change its current manufacturing process for 22nm chips.
IBM has worked with Mentor Graphics and Toppan Printing to come up with the new technique. IBM has not announced when it plans to start using the new technique for manufacturing 22nm chips. But, it is very likely that they want to start before Intel’s plan of using the 22nm technology in 2011.
[Via eWeek]