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Moore’s Law Lives Another Day With Maskless Lithography Trick
Posted 10/13/08 at 03:49:51 PM | by Alex Castle
Image Credit: Wikipedia
When it comes to Moore’s law these days, it seems like everyone’s a cynic. However, now there’s one more reason to be optimistic about the future of miniaturization, as researchers have published a paper describing a lithography technique which may provide a new means of producing chip features smaller than 32nm.
The technique involves the use of quasiparticles called plasmons to focus light at an incredibly high resolution. Chris Lee at Ars Technica describes the technology: “A lens, based on plasmons, can be created by a set of concentric metal rings. The fields from the plasmons in each ring act in such a way as to create a tightly focused spot of light. In principle, these lenses could focus light tightly enough to create features about five to ten nanometers in size.”
The problem with plasmon lenses is that they must be positioned at just 20 nm away from the wafer. The scientists claim to have overcome this hurdle with their new technique, which uses air pressure to control the lens’s distance from the wafer.
Significantly, the new technique eliminates the need to create a new photomask for each revision to the chip, potentially lowering costs and speeding up development.
Comments Print Email interesting technology promises here
Submitted by dstevens on Tue, 2008-10-14 03:29
least of which is not : faster and cheaper
Who wants to lay a bet here and now that if chips are produced with this or any other "cheaper" method, for some reason wont have an impact that lowers the consumer price at all. Im betting that they would release them at higher costs than 45nm Quad cores were at the time of thier release. ($1200.00+ for an extreme quad core?? are you freaking serious?)
related thought off topic : anyone notice gas dropped nearly $2 / gallon in the last 2 weeks?
are we to believe that they have fixed all thier refinery problems, or found a new mass cache of oil?
where are all the problems and issues that were making it 4 to nearly 5 dollars a gallon at now?
How did they suddenly go away?
The relation i wanted to show is that just cause somthign is produced cheaper dosent mean it will be cheaper for us. If theres money to make off of somthing expect to get raped at the register.And for what its worth, I dont think its right or fair.
You listening Blizzard???
Submitted by Kazabet on Tue, 2008-10-14 09:15
Nice flamebait.
Thanks for my laugh for the morning.
Submitted by US_Ranger on Tue, 2008-10-14 06:24
No offense there dstevens but you shouldn't make false sweeping generalizations on economics.
1) Just because something has a "cheaper" method or way of being produced doesn't mean it's going to be cheaper out of the gate. New technology isn't super expensive to gouge customers, it's expensive because manufacturing methods, distribution, research and development and and a million other factors. If it was automatically cheaper, companies would bring it out at lower prices to gain market dominance.
2) Your oil market remark is so far off that I honestly shouldn't bother trying to explain it to you. Granted, I'm no economist but let's look at some simple ideas here. When a recession hits, people will use less. Oil is one of the commodities that people use less. When demand for oil goes down, the prices also go down. When demand for oil goes back up (summer time, winter time, YES, oil is a seasonal commodity) the prices go up. However, even seasonal increases probably won't happen as much this year as the recession is affecting everyones pocket book, which means they are driving less. This is common sense.
Price gouging is a real problem in the world, but it's not the reason for every high cost that has even come about, whether it be with technology or oil. The media's sensationalist tactics have apparently paid off for you. I suggest doing reading on the subject instead of watching CNN, FOX, etc.
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