Hmm thanks for clearing that up =)Cyberman said:Err.. no.. hehehe let me explain to what they mean by k.. k is the constant of capacitance of a material.. when they say low K you will see the word DIELECTRIC associated with it. Dielectrics are materials used as INSULATORs. CMOS is complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. The most comon form of transistor in things today. A CMOS transistor has a GATE that is actually a capacitor. This is important because gate capacitance influences how much current is needed to drive a transistor at a given frequency. The higher the gate capacitance the greater the current and the greater the power. low K materials are needed to reduce the gate capacitance and thus increase the speed. High K (standard silicon oxide) materials have worked for the last 20 years just fine because the switching speeds and THICKNESS of the gate have been high. Now that gate thickness has decreased so much (.13 micron features gives a gate thickness of something like 20nm or something like that) the capacitance increases dramatically along with the leakage current of the gate. So it's a double damnation problem with the gate being the limiting factor of switch speeds. Low k materials are VERY difficult to work with, and in fact will give a much lower yield in terms of useful parts. At the rate intel has been ratcheting the speed of there parts, they are likely dealing with huge leakage currents and gate capacitance problems. They've offset this with a few tricks however. It will be interesting to see what happens when the silicon on insulator processes become more affordable.
They should have waited before releasing the GFX .. getting something working, and having a working product are two different things.
high k = high leakage current and high switching losses. I would say 1/2 the power is going into that right there. So.. I guess they wait tell the low k process is up and running
Cyb
Seems the explanation I read on another message board was not quite true
