AMD and IBM have unveiled details about their up-coming processors based on the 45 nm technology, which will provide better performance at a lower cost.

Both companies have disclosed information about their fruitful joint venture, meant at tackling Intel’s supremacy in the processor area. AMD and IBM are saying that the breakthroughs they’ve registered in this key domain (the 45 nm technology) will put them ahead of any competitor in the race for mass production.

The two hardware giants revealed the fact that up-coming chips will use technologies LIKE the immersion lithography and ultra-low-k interconnect dielectrics. Immersion lithography is a resolution enhancement technique that interposes a liquid medium between the optics and the wafer surface, replacing the usual air gap. A DIELECTRIC, or electrical insulator, is a substance that is highly resistant to electric current. A low-k dielectric is one with a small dielectric constant. In digital circuits, insulating dielectrics separate the conducting parts (wire interconnects and transistors) from one another. To make higher-speed chips, the transistors must be placed closer and closer together, and thus the insulating LAYER becomes thinner. This leads to charge build up and crosstalk, adversely affecting the maximum operating speed and performance of the chip.

Low-K dielectrics have very low dielectric constants, reducing parasitic capacitance and enabling faster switching speeds and lower heat dissipation.

"Immersion lithography will allow us to deliver enhanced microprocessor design definition and manufacturing consistency," AMD VICE president of logic technology development Nick Kepler said.

“The introduction of immersion lithography and ultra-low-K interconnect dielectrics at 45nm is an early example of the successful transfer of technology from our ground-breaking research work at the Albany Nanotech Center to IBM’s state-of-the-art 300mm manufacturing and development line at East Fishkill, New York, as well as AMD’s state-of-the-art 300mm manufacturing line in Dresden, Germany,” said Gary Patton, vice president, technology development at IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center. “The successful integration of leadership technologies with AMD and our partners demonstrates the strength of our collaborative innovation model.”

The companies also added that they will use a series of enhanced transistor strain techniques to simplify the production of 45 nanometer processors. The 45 nm technology node should have significantly tighter specs than the current 65 nm node. '45 nm' itself should refer to the average half-pitch of a memory cell manufactured at that technology level.

The 45 nm process is the next milestone (to be commercially viable in mid 2007 to early 2008) in semiconductor manufacturing and fabrication. AMD has only just started creating 65 nanometer based CPUs at its Dresden plant, long after its competitor Intel rolled out the process at its factories.I understood this from the get-go...

The AMD and IBM discussion SEEMS odd because we don't see IBM in the PC market, and that's what most of us think of when we think of AMD since AMD and Intel are the major players in the PC market. IBM's processors, as far as I know, are used for everything from handheld devices to mainframe computers. This would include servers used for various purposes, with a heavy presence in the Internet arena. But, again, they are basically not present in the PC market.