SemiSerious

Slogans, marketing, and heavy-handed branding dominate our consumer society. Whether we are letting our fingers do the walking, in good hands with All-State, or the best a man can get, it’s hard to escape the advertisers who maximize every opportunity to shape our thinking. The tech world is no different of course. We have “Intel inside” and its jingle, TI’s “Technology for Innovators,” and Samsung’s “Digital World.” But these are all still for profit organizations beholden to share holders.

It’s unusual to think of academia in the same light as the big corporations, but maybe things are changing. University researchers need to sell their ideas to a certain extent to establish and maintain funding sources. In the past, I thought profs focused their efforts on publishing in journals and speaking at academic conferences. There are a few, though, who seek more limelight.

Semiconductor International recently covered an announcement from Rensaler Polytechnic Institute (RPI) about nanoblades produced by oblique angle deposition. You might already be wondering about that catchy name. I’m probably a little jealous, but nanoblades is certainly a term that grabs our attention. I have no quarrel with the term or perhaps even the novelty of the structure. However, it is misleading to talk about nanoblades as “vastly different from any other nanomaterial that has been created before.”

I assume that Semiconductor International and RPI researcher Gwo-Ching Wang referred to another leader in this field when referring to the fact that “most nanotech researchers aim to produce interesting 3-D structures such as nanotubes, nanorods or nanosprings. A well-established research team at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have created many unique structures using similar low-angle deposition techniques. The GLAD - or Glancing Angle Deposition - group is led by Dr. Michael Brett. Their work is primarily related to optical devices.

Okay, I can hear people saying, “Why are nanoblades catchy but GLAD films are okay?” Well, that’s true and although I thought this post was going to relatively short, it’s rapidly expanding into the type of pro-Canadian diatribe that I am usually against. I only want to do my part to promote Dr. Brett’s team and their work. Since the point of the original Semiconductor International article appeared to be the potential for nanoblade film use in fuel cells because of the large surface area they offered, it was unbalanced journalism to suggest that blades were an advancement over rods and springs. If you are questioning the available surface areas of the GLAD films, please take the time to visit the team’s image gallery.

AMD added the Quad Core Barcelona to its server lineup of microprocessors this week. Many, including AMD’s own Hector Ruiz, have said this launch is at least six months late. But AMD is clearly the first to achieve a “native” quad core MPU with four processing cores monolithically integrated onto one piece of silicon. Intel’s current approach is to package two dual core dies together.

The AMD approach offers several advantages, most notably communication between each processing unit is on-chip rather than through a slower system bus. Intel disputes the viability of a native quad core design at 65nm, saying it would be too expensive until 45nm.

A quick look at the numbers shows that the AMD native quad and the 2X dual core Intel devices consume the exact same amount of silicon real estate (about 280 square millimetres). But that’s where the similarities end.

Intel uses almost double the 4.5 megabytes of on-chip SRAM memory cache found on AMD’s Barcelona. AMD has optimized their use of this smaller SRAM by sharing a 2 megabyte chunk of L3 cache between all four cores whereas Intel forces 8.25 megabytes into an even split of dedicated caches within each core.

The most significant boast of the Barcelona is the inclusion of the Northbridge memory controller IP block on die. To me, it looks like AMD have packed a lot into the Barcelona, but the die architecture does not seem to be pushing the envelope too hard. The design appears to be very conservative with some unused space between circuit blocks. Although Intel will launch a 45nm product before AMD, I would bet on AMD getting their quad core devices onto the 45nm platform with more ease, if not sooner.

A couple weeks ago I scratched rather shallowly into the topic of turning motion energy into useful electricity (check it out). I was impressed with the development of a technology that could convert power line frequency mechanical vibrations into about 40mW from a device fitting inside a one centimetre cube. This, I argued, would start to put wireless sensor networks on the map.

Once again through Technology Review, I have now discovered that someone has taken the miniaturization of the concept to a much smaller level. Technology Review recognized Xudong Wang with its TR35 award for young innovators. His energy conversion device is small enough for implant into the body to power biosensors. I have not been able to confirm the power density or typical dimensions, but one nanoamp was reported in Technology Review. The device produces its electrical current by converting ultrasonic frequencies. I cannot say for sure, but I assume the intention is to externally provide ulstrasonic energy to the biological entity containing the device.

So unlike the devices discussed previously in SemiSerious, Xudong’s invention may not be intended for harvesting wasted background energy from power line vibrations so unavoidable in our electrified world. On the other hand, optimization of the process used to produce the ZnO nanowire arrays appears to be leading to huge efficiency improvements. It isn’t a stretch to think that a small device on a white water river adventure in your blood stream or in your gut could provide enough power for many sensors and related circuits.

On a loosely related note, Georgia Tech appears to be upwardly mobile, at least in university rankings which puts them at number seven for US public institutions. In fact, they are tops in nanotech.