IBM triples transistor performance with germanium. IBM researchers today said they have successfully demonstrated a new technique for improving transistor performance that will help the company build smaller, more powerful chips in the next decade. [Computerworld News]
Leave it to IBM to use ALL the cards they have been dealt. Back in the old days of semiconductors, Germanium was the only game in town. Now it's Silicon. But the more things change, the more they stay the same and Germanium is back baby. Add to this the experiments in immersion lithography and I think they may have more than a few curve balls to throw at Intel who have staked their whole operation on bulk Silicon. That's the only element their chemists, engineers and physicists know at the quantum level. They are not Germanium experts at all. That's why the pooh-poohed Silicon on Insulator so much. That was a physics they were unfamiliar with, but strained Silicon was good, because they knew that, it was comfortable, familiar, safe. Well they had better get going on learning or re-learning Germanium ASAP so they can get to the 65nm product and 45nm product and 35nm product when IBM makes the same moves.
9:59:19 PM 
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