Texas Instruments Reports New Technology for Building Smaller Chips

Texas Instruments Inc. said Wednesday its researchers have invented computer chip manufacturing technology that will allow it to build the tiniest transistors ever--several times smaller than now possible.

The Dallas-based chip maker said the new technology allows it to build transistors with a length of just 0.07 micron--1,000 times thinner than a human hair--narrowing the distance electrons must travel to make a connection.

The technology would enable products only dreamed of today, including shrunken hearing aids that can be directly implanted in the inner ear. Wireless phones would be able to handle not just voice but data and video. Hard disks would read billions of bits of data a second for instant access to large databases.

Texas Instruments set an aggressive two- to three-year schedule to produce the new transistors, but rivals and industry analysts were divided over whether it was possible.

However, they agreed that, if successful, TI’s advance would put the company two to three generations ahead of current industry capabilities and put pressure on the industry to significantly upgrade every step of the chip-making process.

“The new 0.07 micron . . . technology will keep TI in the forefront of high-performance manufacturing,” Yoshio Nishi, research and development chief at the chip maker, said in a statement announcing the developments.

The smallest transistors Texas Instruments now produces are 0.18 micron.

Texas Instruments said it plans to initiate transistor designs in the new 0.07-micron size starting in 2000, with volume production beginning in 2001.

Texas Instruments said that, with the smaller geometry transistors, it will be able to build complete computer systems on a single chip with speeds exceeding 1 billion hertz--at least double that of current chips.

Products based on these chips will weigh less, shrink in size, consume less power and be able to execute software much faster than with today’s technology, TI promised.

Experts agreed that in order for Texas Instruments to build the new transistors, sweeping changes must occur within the industry at large, which must eliminate other technology bottlenecks that exist before such tiny devices can be built.

For its own part, Texas Instruments will have to make massive capital spending commitments to build entirely new chip fabrication plants--running at up to $2 billion apiece, Jim Feldhan, president of Semico Research Group, a Phoenix-based semiconductor research firm, said.

Texas Instrument’s shares fell $1.19 to close at $56.19 on the New York Stock Exchange.