Home > News > Intel gets a little smaller, sort of. April 17th,
2007 Intel gets a little smaller, sort of. It would appear that
Intel is paving new roads for the UMPC's (Ultra Mobile PC) and
MID's (Mobile Internet Devices) with the likes of Blackberries
and PDA's. Dubbed with the killer code name "Silverthorne", the
new chip is to be of a 45nm design, making for a number of
distinct advantages. First, Intel is using their Hi-k Metal Gate
transistor design. This is a new type of transistor gate that
will replace the conventional Polysilicon gate MOS (Metal Oxide
Semi-Conductor) transistors that have been in use since the late
1960's. Though silicon is the element of choice for
semiconductors, it does have a problem with voltage leakage at
those smaller sizes. The new Hi-k Metal Gates use special
combinations of metals, insulators and gate design to help
reduce this voltage leakage in smaller die designs. Intel is
already working on Silverthorne based processors for the Intel
Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and Intel X