IBM’s holes for speed

The Armonk, New York, company supplies the chips used in the top three video-game consoles. Its solution is to create insulation between the wires by tapping the same process that allows seashells, snowflakes and bubbles in a bubble bath to form in a pattern.

IBM said it created a new chemical compound, which it declined to identify, that assembles itself in a uniform system of holes after being poured onto a silicon wafer with a wired chip pattern and baked. A vacuum is created in each hole, resulting in better insulation of the wires. “The compound itself is the secret sauce,” said Adalio Sanchez, general manager of IBM’s global engineering solutions, systems and technology group. “You are using the Periodic Table in this industry like you’ve never used it before.”

For nearly half a century, the industry has followed Moore’s Law, which says that the number of components on integrated circuits such as silicon computer processors will roughly double every couple of years, while the cost per component declines at a commensurate rate. But scientists recently have feared that they were bumping up against physical barriers.

In January, IBM and Intel announced competing breakthroughs in the use of a new metal called hafnium to replace silicon in one key part of the semiconductor where transistors were leaking current. Intel is expected to start making hafnium-based chips during the second half of this year. IBM is expected to roll out its chips with hafnium in 2008.

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