IBM alliance touts early success for 32-nm high-k/metal gate technology

Big Blue and its semiconductor partners claim the HKMG (high-k/metal gate) technology provides up to 35% better performance and a 45% reduction in power consumption.

By Matthew Miller, Editor-in-Chief, EDN.com -- Electronic News, 4/14/2008

IBM and its development partners—Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Freescale, Infineon Technologies, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, and Toshiba—have announced positive early results for a gate-stack advance that they say provides significant improvements in performance and power consumption at the 32-nm technology node.

Demonstrations of the HKMG (high-k/metal gate) gate stack at IBM's 300-mm fab in East Fishkill, NY, show that the technology is ready for "early customer engagements," according to the companies. The companies announced the technology in December of last year (see "IBM, partners claim 32-nm high-k/metal gate SRAM, SOI").

The alliance claims that 32-nm circuits built using the technology perform up to 35% better and consume 45% less power than circuits of equivalent operating voltage built on a 45-nm process. Furthermore, testing on library chips and industry-standard microprocessor critical paths yielded 40% performance improvements, compared with conventional technology at the same dimensions, according to the companies.

IBM's Common Platform partners—Chartered and Samsung—have documented the same improvements on their home turf, according to the companies.

The partners are now offering a low-power, 32-nm "design-enablement" package with ground rules that allow extension to 28 nm. Silicon support will be available in the third quarter via a "prototype shuttle" program, with plans for quarterly shuttles, according to the companies.

According to IBM, devices built at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering's Albany NanoTech Complex indicate that the process can be extended to 22 nm.