By Steve G. Steinberg
Pundits claim that our age is built on silicon, but it's old-fashioned metal that puts the conductor into semiconductors. Last fall, IBM reminded us of metal's critical role when it developed a way to use copper instead of aluminum to construct the electrical pathways on a silicon wafer. Because copper is a far better conductor, IBM's new manufacturing process creates faster, smaller chips that consume less power. The first of these copper chips is expected as soon as mid-1998.
ELECTRIC WORD
Faster, Smaller, Copper
