IBM & others look towards 45nm node

Everyone knows the common Moore's Law formulation, which dictates that transistor sizes shrink on a regular timetable, but fewer are familiar with what is commonly called Moore's Second Law. Moore's Second Law is variously formulated, but in general it states that the cost of building a chip fabrication facility doubles about every three years. What this means for the semiconductor industry is that it costs progressively more for everyone to keep with manufacturing powerhouse Intel, which last year dropped $3.5 billion on a second 45nm (feature size), 300mm (wafer size) fab in Israel.

This kind of multibillion-dollar sticker shock is why IBM isn't making the jump to 45nm alone. Chartered Semi, Infineon, and Samsung have all joined with IBM to develop process technology at the 45nm node, and the group has just announced their first functional 45nm circuits. These first circuits, which came out of IBM's 300mm East Fishkill fab, were mostly communications circuits, based on standard functional blocks provided by Infineon. The consortium will use these standard circuit blocks to debug and tweak the process, getting it ready for prime time.

Once the kinks are worked out, the consortium plans to begin using the new process for production chips in 2008. This is about the timeframe that Intel expects its second 45nm fab to come online. The consortium will outfit existing 300mm fabs owned by IBM, Chartered, and Samsung with the new 45nm technology.

This kind of collaboration on chip fabrication has been going on for a long time, but it will become more common as feature sizes shrink and fab prices soar. For instance, Chartered Semi's 65nm fab has just started producing processors for AMD, under a deal signed two years ago. IBM has produced chips for a number of companies over the years, like VIA, NVIDIA, and of course Sony. IBM and AMD also collaborated on the aforementioned 65nm SOI process technology that Chartered is using for AMD processors. Ultimately, the semiconductor fabrication game is looking increasingly like a square dance, with a few dancers partnering off in different combinations at different stages. The guy standing over against the wall, coolly surveying the scene, is Intel.

Wi-Fi Alliance to certify 802.11n Draft 2.0 equipment

In an unusual move, the Wi-Fi Alliance will certify the next generation of wireless networking equipment in two waves. The two-step process is designed to give consumers access to the latest technology now with some confidence of interoperability, and to give the IEEE some breathing room to finalize the specifications on its own schedule.

The first phase will be based on draft 2.0 of the standard, to be released this coming March, and certified equipment will have been thoroughly tested to ensure that it works with other certified 802.11n pre-standard gear. The second phase will certify equpment against the full, final version of the IEEE standard, and is expected sometime in the first half of 2008.

The Wi-Fi Alliance, which includes industry heavyweights like Intel, Motorola, Cisco, and Texas Instruments, recognized a need for quick action in response to the heavy demand on faster wireless networking equipment. All of the major networking specialists, including Linksys, Netgear, and D-Link, already have products on store shelves based on draft 1.0 of the 802.11n standard, and millions of units are expected to ship in 2007. The problem with that is interoperability, as some parts of the draft are open to some interpretation, making routers from manufacturer A less than guaranteed to work with access cards from manufacturer B today. Forcing manufacturers to submit to interoperability testing should eliminate that concern.

The two stages of certification will carry clearly different brandings, though no names or images have been chosen yet. Phase one gear will also be clearly marked as not guaranteed to be forward-compatible with phase two, in order to cut down on customer confusion and the nearly inevitable lawsuits that would result from leading us to believe that everything will work perfectly with final stage equipment.

Now, stage two will be backwards-compatible, but there's just no guarantee that missing features in phase one will be available through firmware or driver updates. Chipset makers and networking equipment manufacturers from Atheros and Airgo to Netgear and Dell are supporting the two-stage approach, and Intel plans to support 802.11n in its first phase of certification in its Kedron wireless module for Santa Rosa, the next generation of the Centrino mobile platform. If the IEEE does not produce its next draft by next spring as expected, the Alliance will take it upon itself to pull together the next best thing—a coherent set of de facto standards.

Windows Media DRM cracked

Digital Rights Management has been a hot-button issue for many years. With the current pervasiveness of high-speed Internet access, coupled with increasingly invasive attempts by content companies to strengthen their digital protection, the debate looks to be far from over.

Now, a new application has been released that will strip Windows Media 10 and 11 files of their DRM. In the online music world, the overwhelming market share winner is Apple's iTunes Music Store, whose protection has been bypassed several times already. Microsoft's Windows Media has been a perpetual also-ran, but it has too received attention from the hackers. In 2001, the version that came with Windows Media Player 7 was defeated by a hacker going by the pseudonym "Beale Screamer." Microsoft then updated their protection, and for years have been touting its invulnerability to hackers. However, this too has now come to an end.

The program, entitled FairUse4WM (Fair Use for Windows Media) requires that the user already owns media files that have been purchased from one of the many Windows Media online stores that exist today. It does not attempt to find encryption keys by brute force, as some other software (most notably DeCSS) has done in the past. Instead, it finds the encryption keys (at least one active key is necessary for the program to work) that have been installed on your computer by Media Player itself. Once these keys have been found, FairUse4WM modifies the .WMA files to remove all traces of encryption on them. The "converted" files can then be played on any player that supports the WMA format, regardless of whether or not it supports WMA DRM—in testing the application, we loaded the converted files on a Macintosh using Flip4Mac. The program does not appear to work with encrypted WMV (Windows Media Video) files.

That the WMA format would be cracked is not that much of a surprise—most DRM formats eventually are. However, in this case, the potential for misuse and lost revenue for WMA stores looms large. Unlike Apple, which has stuck to its 99 cents per song purchasing scheme, many online Windows Media stores have been promoting a subscription model, where the consumer pays a monthly access fee to download as many songs as they wish. Under this model, if the user stops paying the monthly fee their license keys are revoked and they can no longer listen to any of their songs. If the songs have been converted by FairUse4WM, however, they will still be able to be played on any platform.

Microsoft has made no comment so far on the issue, but look for an update to Windows Media Player to try and "patch" the issue, and possibly lawsuits against the creators of FairUse4WM.