Intel Atom: Intel Makes Its Smallest Chip Ever

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photograph by Steve Bronstein

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Designing a microprocessor like the Atom, Intel's smallest chip ever, is like planning a city so tiny it could fit into a single bacteria. First, architects map out which routes go where so that millions of switches -- the transistors -- can direct traffic in the form of ones and zeroes that shoot from transmitters to transreceivers across silicon expressways (called "buses"). Once the schematics are plotted, designers create microscopic mock-ups of each layer, or "mask," and then test them on powerful workstations, mimicking all the functions of the chip. Much depends on getting the map right: Once the chip is built, its 47 million transistors, which are so minute that 2 million of them could sit on the period at the end of this sentence, switch on and off up to 300 billion times per second. If just one of them malfunctions, the entire processor spits up a hair ball.

The chip's fabrication phase is another logistical nightmare, some 300 steps involving chemicals, gas, and light. It begins with a land grab in the form of purified beach sand -- also known as silicon. The sand is melted and grown into cylinders, then forged into thin wafers the size of LP records, which are shined until their surfaces function as "perfect mirrors." With photolithographic "printing," the transistors and electrical passages are layered onto the wafers. Things get really complicated from here. To ready the chip for mass production, the wafer is blasted with heat and coated with silicon dioxide and light-sensitive photographic film. The masks are then overlaid, with more layers ladled on top, and the whole thing etched, bombarded with chemicals, and covered with layers of metal. Each and every gate on each and every transistor is fed a positive- or negative-charged ion that will determine whether its job is to open or close. The wafers are then cut into chip-size bits using a precision saw.

Building transistors that are only slightly larger than the silicon atom itself is a dazzling display of design and engineering, made more so by the sheer pace of technological innovation over the past six decades. An early transistor, created by Bell Labs, was about an eighth of an inch in diameter; today, 2,000 transistors placed side by side equal the width of a human hair -- and the cost has fallen to about one-millionth of what it was in 1968. Mooly Eden, general manager of Intel's mobile platforms group, contrasts his business with the automobile industry: If Ford or Toyota had innovated at a similar pace, he says, "a car would probably go half the speed of light," and if you were going to San Francisco for a week, it would be "cheaper to throw out the car and buy a new one" than to feed quarters into the parking meter.

At least as impressive as the Atom's size, however, is how little power it uses. Over the years, while Intel and its rabid rival AMD engaged in a game of one-upmanship over who could produce faster, more powerful chips, they didn't pay much attention to battery drain or heat -- both natural side effects of all that increased processing power. And that is what makes the Atom a tectonic shift in strategy. It's not faster than previous processors, nor does it do more. In fact, it does less. But it uses a fraction of the battery power -- 10 times less, according to Intel -- and therein lie the seeds of a revolution in mobile technology.

Most people with handheld devices such as a BlackBerry don't need a processor powerful enough to edit video, create Pixar-like effects, or deconstruct the human genome. They just want a smartphone that lets them send and receive email, open attachments, surf the Web, take and store photos, and perform other basics without burning through the battery. (Steve Jobs, take note.) Of course, that is easier said than done. Today's handhelds gorge on battery power, but since they can't digest Flash, the basis for most of the media online, they still don't allow users to surf the entire Internet. With an iPhone, for instance, you can visit YouTube, but you can watch only those videos that have been specially recoded. The Atom, by contrast, was designed from the bottom up to provide the entire Internet experience with minimal battery drain. And even with that quantum leap in capability, the first set of devices running on Atom chips get between four and six hours of battery life, according to Pankaj Kedia, Intel's ecosystems manager. He predicts those numbers will only improve in future generations.