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Jun 15, 2007 at 02:07 PM |
The fluffy hype-driven announcement from IBM over the use of metal gates a few months back was supposed to have been addressed at a forthcoming technology symposium, at which IBM would reveal more details.
My impression from IBM people was that the VLSI Technology Symposium in June this year would be the place that would happen, though others I talked to thought the December IEDM conference would be the place.
I was not surprised then to see a headline claiming that IBM has indeed revealed more on its metal-gate strategy, especially as it is the week of the VLSI Technology Symposium.
The headline said:
"IBM offers first high-k metal gate details"
It was written by Ed Sperling, Editor-in-Chief at Electronic News. However, the story by Ed has no mention of anything to do with metal gates, which is really what everyone wants to know about.
High-k is a done deal, and though there are some subtle differences amongst chip manufacturer selections, they all seem to rely on hafnium. Ed's story covers the high-k, but not metal gates.
See here: http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6452010&industryid=47037
A nice tease indeed, and one that got me rushing over to the read the rest of the story. But it falls short, way too short to justify that headline.
I wonder how many other headlines we will see that mention metal gates but fail to mention the topic in the body of the story. Cry wolf a few too many times and we all know what happens.
Some may notice a news story on this website about Renesas and metal gates (http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/3013/2/). Don't be alarmed: I can assure you here and now that it does cover metal gates. Congrats to Renesas for coming out on this - we all know the big players that are continuing to tease!
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