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Applied Materials, launches a breakthrough tool to reduce chip power consumption
Applied Materialshas announced a new tool for reducing the power chips consume, enabling a new generation of powerful new gadgets with longer battery life.
The innovation is built into the chip equipment manufacturer’s newest tool, the Applied Producer Onyx film treatment system, announced today. Semiconductor chips serve as the brains of electronic gadgets from laptops to iPhones. And each chip has miles of microscopic electrical wiring built into it these days. The new Onyx effectively wraps those wires in a layer of insulation that can be accurately built at tiny dimensions.
“This is a big breakthrough,” said Bill McClintock, vice president and general manager of Applied’s Dielectric Systems and Modules business unit, in an interview.
He said that interconnect accounts for a third of the power used in a chip, and improving its power consumption results in higher performance and longer battery life. With Onyx, Applied Materials will enable the most power-efficient and strong interconnects in the industry.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Applied Materials is the world’s biggest chip maker. The new Onyx fits in line with its other chip-making chambers, which process wafers and move them to the next machine. Eventually, those wafers are sliced into individual chips and used in electronic devices.
Chip makers who buy the new system would introduce it in a chip factory (which can be built these days for $4 billion) as one of many machines in a manufacturing line. The Onyx would handle eight to 16 processes, which would be followed by as many as 150 other processes before the chip is finished.