{"id":199742,"date":"2017-02-22T09:12:36","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T07:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=199742"},"modified":"2017-02-22T09:13:43","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T07:13:43","slug":"graphene-coated-copper-interconnects-could-boost-cpu-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/199742-graphene-coated-copper-interconnects-could-boost-cpu-performance.html","title":{"rendered":"Graphene-coated copper interconnects could boost CPU performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at Stanford have found a way to improve the performance of next-generation processors by <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/semiconductors\/materials\/graphene-could-buttress-nextgen-computer-chip-wiring\" target=\"_blank\">coating copper interconnects with graphene<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest factor influencing the improved performance of processors is transistor scaling, which is the concern of\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mooreslaw.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Moore&#8217;s law<\/a><\/strong>, but there are other factors which become important as silicon transistors shrink.<\/p>\n<p>Transistors communicate using copper interconnects, which have begun to approach their limitations as new semiconductor nodes are brought online.<\/p>\n<p>As engineers pack more transistors into the same area, this increases the density of the interconnects &#8211; resulting in increased heat.<\/p>\n<p>The first processors with copper interconnects used 1km of copper wiring per square centimetre, while modern 14nm CPUs contain over 10km of interconnects in the same area.<\/p>\n<p>Copper interconnects are constantly shrinking, becoming thinner and increasing their resistance.<\/p>\n<p>While tantalum nitride trenches are a solution, they are not effective for smaller semiconductor nodes.<\/p>\n<p>Stanford researchers believe coating copper interconnects in graphene will allow progress past the 0.3nm node, while maintaining stability and preventing electromigration.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/196858-graphics-card-performance-over-the-years-amd-vs-nvidia.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">Graphics card performance over the years \u2013 AMD vs Nvidia<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at Stanford have found a way to improve the performance of next-generation processors by coating copper interconnects with graphene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":199748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[28218,41492,41490],"class_list":["post-199742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-cpu","tag-interconnects","tag-processor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199778,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199742\/revisions\/199778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}