News IBM, Samsung Develop VTFET Semiconductor Design for the Future

[Admin]

IBM and Samsung have announced the development of a new semiconductor manufacturing design that can extend scaling possibilities for years to come. The new VTFET technology rethinks the horizontal arrangement, taking advantage of vertical transistor design for higher densities and better power efficiency.

IBM, Samsung Develop VTFET Semiconductor Design for the Future : Read more

 

[BillyBuerger]

...not even physics can stand in the way of our technological progress.

Oh, so they're using magic now to create transistors instead of science. Interesting...

 

[Endymio]

" "Simply" rearranging transistor layouts vertically can thus be more impactful than even node changes..."

Vertical manufacturing at this scale is not a "simple" rearrangement, and given the new transistor architecture. this change is considerably more involved than a mere node shrink.

 

[InvalidError]

This is basically an evolution of VFET.

I'd imagine gate-all-around is much easier to achieve with simple concentric vertical gates and P/N channels than building fins or stacks across several layers.

 

[Endymio]

The entire article is all about how it isn't "simple"; the "simply" is even within quotation marks, implying that it itself is an oversimplification of what had been previously described.

On the contrary, the article states this architecture is "free from the constraints" of the traditional difficulties of increasing transistor densities, then moves immediately on to discuss its benefits. Nowhere are the complexities of a new transistor design even touched upon, and in fact are summarized merely as no more than a "design principle", rather than an entirely new architecture.

 

[InvalidError]

Nowhere are the complexities of a new transistor design even touched upon, and in fact are summarized merely as no more than a "design principle", rather than an entirely new architecture.

Well, if you use Gate-All-Around as a starting point, all of the extra complexities from needing to dope semiconductor layers other than the silicon substrate are already there. Vertical channel transistors are quite possibly easier to make using fewer total fab steps than multi-channel stacked GAA FETs.