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Post by Larry Powers II with Silicon Valley Core Group, LLC

Finally, the semiconductor industry is catching up with Intel. Now, any chip designer can use transistors with high-k metal gates, which enable higher clock speeds and lower power consumption. It’s the biggest advance in transistor technology in 50 years.

Intel announced high-k metal-gate (HKMG) transistors in 2003 and introduced them in 2007 with 45nm Penryn processors. AMD wanted 45nm HKMG, too, but couldn’t pull it off. The first AMD chip with HKMG is the Llano Fusion processor, an integrated CPU/GPU. Llano is manufactured in a 32nm process and is finally hitting the market this year.

Now the wait is over. Independent chip foundries like GlobalFoundries (the AMD spin-off) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) are rolling out their 28nm HKMG processes this year. Any chip designers willing to pay the price can use HKMG transistors in their new designs. Test chips and engineering samples are looking good, so volume production will ramp up next year. The improved transistors will appear in some consumer products you’ll buy in 2012.

Few of those products will advertise HKMG, but the benefits will be higher performance and greater power efficiency. It’s coming in time for the next wave of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile electronics.

The “k” in high-k is the dielectric constant, a measure of electrical capacitance. The “gate” determines if the transistor passes current or not. Since the 1960s, transistor gates have been made of silicon materials. As transistors keep shrinking with each generation of fabrication technology, the gates keep getting thinner. Now they’re so thin (only four atoms, in some cases) that they’re leaking too much current.