Taiwan scientists claim microchip'breakthrough'14 December 2010

United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) engineers pushtrollies at a factory in southern Taiwan. Taiwanesescientists have unveiled an advanced microchiptechnology which they claimed marks a breakthrough inpiling ever more memory into ever smaller spaces.Taiwan is among the top four microchip producers in theworld.

Taiwanese scientists on Tuesday unveiled anadvanced microchip technology which theyclaimed marks a breakthrough in piling ever morememory into ever smaller spaces.

The scientists said they had succeeded inproducing a circuit measuring just nine nanometresacross.

"Researchers used to believe that 20 nanometreswas the limit for microchip technologies," said HoChia-hua, who heads the team behind the projectat the state-run National Nano DeviceLaboratories.

A chip using the new memory technology hasabout 20 times the storage capacity of memoryunits now available on the market and consumesjust one 200th of the electricity, the scientists said.

The benefits of greater memory and reduced

electricity consumption are highly sought in themanufacture of electronic gadgets like smartphones and tablet computers.

Using such technology, a chip the size of onesquare centimetre will be capable of storing onemillion pictures or 100 hours of 3D movies, saidYang Fu-liang, the director general of theLaboratories.

However, Nobunaga Chai, an analyst of the Taipei-based electronics market research unit Digitimes,said it would be some time before anyone couldstart making money on the technology.

"I'm afraid it will take several years before theadvanced technology can be turned intocommercial use," he told AFP.

Taiwan is among the top four microchip producersin the world.

(c) 2010 AFP

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APA citation: Taiwan scientists claim microchip 'breakthrough' (2010, December 14) retrieved 16September 2018 from https://phys.org/news/2010-12-taiwan-scientists-microchip-breakthrough.html

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