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NEW YORK (AP) - Computer chips, it seems, work better if they're more like Swiss cheese than American cheese.
Chips with minuscule holes in them can run faster or use less energy, IBM Corp. said in announcing Thursday a novel way to create them — potentially one of the most significant advances in chip manufacturing in years.
To create these tiny holes, the computer company has harnessed a plastic-like material that spontaneously forms into a sieve-like structure. The holes have a width of 20 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, placing the method in the much-vaunted field of nanotechnology.
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