However, he clarified that it is still too early to know which of them would use this innovation since low-k dielectric is still a new method under study. Unlike Intel, IBM usually earns from licensing and not from selling chips in volumes. IBM shook the semiconductor industry last year after coming up with a breakthrough in chip design. Instead of using aluminum wires to interconnect transistors in chips, the company's chip designers used copper to wire these transistors together. According to Teyssedre, IBM has shipped around 2 million copper-based chips so far after it was introduced two years ago.
Copper is considered a better conductor of electricity than aluminum.
SOI is considered a crucial factor for extending battery life in handheld devices. SOI is another method of placing a thin layer of silicon on top of an insulator such as silicon oxide, which is actually glass. The addition of SOI alone can improve performance of chips up to 20 to 30 percent. IBM has, indeed, saved Moore's Law from obsolescence and has even extended its relevance to two years. That's just for now.