Strained Silicon

By Doug Barney

I have to admit, that when I first heard the term“strained silicon,” I assumed it meant that engineers are straining to get moreprocessing power out of finite silicon physics. Not surprisingly, I was deadwrong. Strained silicon is a process where the atoms are literally stretched, or“strained.” This stretched silicon is more efficient in moving electrons so thechips can run faster and even use less power.

Research house Frost &Sullivan (Cupertino, CA) believes that stretched silicon could laythe groundwork for superfast game computers, supercomputers, and could alsoaccelerate memory devices.

The only things standing in its way? A lack ofcollaborations amongst the vendors and a shortage of good standards. Hmmm.Reminds me of markets like storage, virtualization, productivity software,general purpose processors, and operating systems. 

http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/press-release.pag?docid=126464564