Intel Introduces 3D Microchip

Posted by Blake Sanders on May 10, 2011 in Telegram Past News

For the past several decades, all electronics have used the same basic 2D microchips. This design, while powerful, is inefficient when compared to Intel’s newest 3D microchip.

Being one of the top microchip producers, Intel has been trying to manufacture their 3D design for the past ten years. While the idea of a 3D microchip has been around for quite some time, nobody has been able to successfully design and manufacture one until Intel.

This 3D design essentially allows for more processing channels to be put in each transistor, the necessary component in each electronic device. Currently, transistor channels are placed on flat surfaces, which limits the amount of channels that can fit in each transistor. In Intel’s new design, more channels can be packed into smaller spaces, making each transistor significantly more efficient. Supposedly, these new transistors are so small that over 100 million of them could fit on the head of pin, whereas the first transistor was big enough to be put together by hand.

This dramatic change has marked a new era in microchip technology. With faster, smaller, and more efficient transistors, electronic devices will be able to enhance their overall performance. Most notably, the microchips utilizing this technology will be more energy efficient, a great upside for the smart phone users that want longer battery lives. These new 3D transistors will become the new standard soon, but they will not be manufactured until the end of this year or beginning of next year.

With such major upside, these new microchips will hopefully start appearing in many of our favorite gadgets. Intel does currently provide microchips to companies like Apple and Dell, so it is not too far-fetched to believe that this may happen in the near future. No matter when these microchips start popping up in popular devices, Intel still has revolutionized the microchip field for the foreseeable future.