Straining Silicon

The most interesting part of Intel's 90nm announcement today is the commitment to strained silicon technology. To understand the benefits of strained silicon you first have to understand some of the fundamental issues with transistors.

Simply put, you want transistors to be able to pass as much current as possible when they're switched on and to pass no current when they're switched off. Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world and transistors don't always behave as they should. Technologies such as Silicon on Insulator (SOI) help stop current from flowing when it shouldn't (leakage current) and technologies such as Strained Silicon help increase the amount of current that's allowed to flow when it's needed (drive current).

We've already explained how Silicon on Insulator works and both AMD and Intel have committed to using the technology; AMD will be first to market with SOI through their Hammer parts, while Intel will introduce SOI with their 65nm process in 2005.





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