Computers & Processors:

TSMC Reveals Tiny Experimental Transistor

TSMC, one of the world's largest contract chipmakers, said its breakthrough could potentially shrink transistors down to nine nanometers, or 1/10,000 the width of a human hair and pack the power of an entire supercomputer on the surface of a fingernail.

"TSMC's technologists have significantly expanded the outlook for the semiconductor industry," the company said in a statement.

While the company said it was confident the transistor would one day be produced commercially, it admitted that day may be a long way off.

Transistors create the "ones and zeroes" of computing by opening or shutting a gate to electrical current. Shrinking their size allows more computing power to be loaded into microchips but can also cause current to leak and make data unstable.

TSMC said it overcame this problem by putting two gates in the transistor to control leakage.

The new transistor could also allow chipmakers to continue to use current manufacturing processes called complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) for another two decades, eliminating the need to develop expensive new processes to boost computing power, TSMC said.

The new field effect transistor, or FET, was dubbed the FinFET as it looks like the back fin of a fish in three dimensions and will be presented in Honolulu.