90 nanometer Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Since 2002 up to 2004, the 90 nanometer(90nm) is, a buzzword in the electronic, the LSI and semiconductor manufacturing , fabrication industry. Going beyond the 90nm represents a breakthrough and a milestone. Related industries, such as FPGA, network chip , DSP, flash memory chip and nanotechnology industries are also affected and are vigilantly monitoring 90 nanometer trends as of 2004. Among the companies who have adopted and disclosed their 90 nanometer processes, but taking different approaches are Intel Corp, IBM Corp, Texas Instruments Inc, Motorola, Fujitsu, TSMC and others. A majority of these companies made their disclosures in August of 2002.The 90-nanometer refers to the width of the smallest circuit wires on the chip. The actual features on 90-nanometer chips can be quite smaller, down to around 45 nanometers.The 90 nanometer represents a breakthrough or milestone in the size of circuits in LSI, semiconductor manufacturing and fabrication. It is a logical effect of of Moore's law. The industrial standard before this was the 0.13 micron. The smaller size increase circuit 'real estate' and speed. Smaller processor gates are the immediate benefit of a smaller semiconductor. The narrower a gate is, the faster the gate can be switched from an "on" position to an "off" position, increasing the maximum clock speed of the chip.
As semiconductor technology drops to below 90nm however, the number of problems increases and only minimal possible improvements. Among the biggest stumbling blocks to 90-nm and finer linewidths is design for manufacturability, which includes optical-proximity-correction (OPC) and phase-shift technologies as well as increasing attention to yield optimization. Interconnect delays increases which leads to timing closure problems. Power consumption raises the heat and unwanted static which may intern cause more burns, more interconnects unwanted capacitance. Because of it's incredibly small size, walls between the wires are thin enough to allow electrons, ussually static to leap across the other wire. This is called leakage. Some companies are attempting to solve this leakage problem by employing a technique called silicon on insulator (SOI). During the manufacturing process, a thin layer of oxide is applied to the silicon wafer, which acts as insulating material to keep electrons inside of the chip's structures.
The 90 nanometer has an effect on circuit design methodology itself. Circuits used be manually designed. But because of the large amount of 'real estate' in circuit space made available by the 90 nanometer, plus the huge demand for a significant amount of functionality and sophistication has forced design engineers to use Electronic and Design Automation tools. Verilog , VHDL , even the C language and other languages are now used to convert an algorithm into a circuit.