Could someone explain .18 Micron?

[coopns]

Could someone explain what 0.18 Micron means?

Thanks.

Coop

 

[Keezah]

It refers to the line width of a cpu. .18 micron (micrometre) 1 millionth of a metre! lol. Progressively the cpu technology is using smaller and smaller of course. Soon the .13 micron Athlon is coming out.


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[Lars_Coleman]

Hard drives have .13 micron processors now?

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[FatBurger]

I was wondering the same thing.

BTW, it refers to the widths of the individual electrical paths in the processor, not the entire CPU.

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[kief]

The measurement if for any chip, not just CPUs.

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[coopns]

So it doesn't have anything to do with speed then does it? Just size?

Thanks.

Coop

 

[kief]

Yes and no. It IS a measurement of size, so isnt directly related to speed, however smaller chips use less power and produce less heat. This is a benefit in obvious ways, but also a chip can normally be run faster due to the fact it wont burn due to the lower power and temp.

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[jc14all]

This is a difficult topic to explain, but maybe this will bring things into perspective for you.

A human hair is approximately 50-60<i>um</i> <A HREF="http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci212567,00.html" target="_new">(microns)</A> in thickness, and the smallest micron that you can see with the human eye is approximately 20<i>um</i>.

Ok, now think of viewing a printed circuit board (PCB) w/all the components interconnected by the small solder trace lines you see on the backside of the PCB. This is a intricately complete circuit, such as the cards in your PC are or even your motherboard itself. So since 20<i>um</i> is all you can see, let's shrink that motherboard down to where the space between the solder traces are .18<i>um</i> apart.

At .18<i>um</i> the components are so close that electron flow travels very fast, and faster means more friction, which means more heat. The key here is to produce a microchip of the fastest gate/source/drain transistors with the least amount of heat transfer. This is the reason moving from .25<i>um</i> to .18<i>um</i>, to .13<i>um</i>, and beyond is a major accomplishment. Still the race for speed continues, as IC manufacturers, i.e., AMD, Intel, IBM, Samsung, Micron...ect. try to product the fastest chips/CPU's.

Back to the this invisible .18<i>um</i> motherboard. So, now lets stack about 26 layers of motherboards on top of each other with interconnecting wires that are as close as .18<i>um</i>, package that chip up in a nitride casing and connect gold pin to the .18<i>um</i> circuitry pads on the chip, and there you have it a Pentium CPU. I might add that all this manufacturing is done using electronic microscopes, thus we have the microchip. Soon technology will be producing nano chips (talking about fast), and that day is now upon us, just around the corner.

It more complexed that what I could explain here, but if you have some time on your hands , this is <A HREF="http://www.wai.com/AppliedScience/Software/Emflex/Papers/emflex-spie91-2.html" target="_new">technical info.</A> that will probably bore you to tears.

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