News Review Electronics giant needs your help
A petition has been launched in the United Kingdom to ensure electronics’ pioneer Alan Turing’s disgraceful treatment by the British government in the 1950’s is acknowledged and a full pardon to the man known as the father of computers. Alan Turing is a giant in the history of computers but is also remembered for his key role in the code breaking of the enigma machine in the Second World War that is widely seen as a key point in the eventual victory of the allied troops. In the world of computing he provided a formalisation of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with his famous Turing machine, the theoretical tool that is still vital for today’s computer engineers to determine the limitations of the most complex of todays CPUs. He is widely considered the father of computing and artificial intelligence.
Despite his enormous contributions to the world at large and especially the British Empire, Turing was the victim of horrendous homophobic attacks and his story is demonstrative of how morally backward a country such as the UK was only half a century. In a ruling that would be considered illegal and entrapment, Turing was arrested for gross indecency after attempting to report an aggravated result that had
scientific world of one of its greatest. It was not until September 2010 that the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, provided a public apology for the terrible treatment Turing received. The crimes he was accused of still stain his record so a recent government opportunity for the public to influence government topics through online petitions has seen the announcement of a petition to completely exonerate Turing of any wrong doing and restore his record to an unblemished state. The petition is addressed to the: Ministry of Justice and states the following. ‘We ask the HM Government to
been committed against him. Rather than receive assistance from the courts he was arrested once it was ascertained he had sexual relations with his attacker. Turing was forced to accept a course of female hormones (chemical castration) rather than face a long jail sentence. The treatment was a disaster and
Turing’ capacity to work became slowly diminished as did the man himself leading him to commit suicide by ingesting cyanide only two weeks before his 42 birthday depriving the
grant a pardon to Alan Turing for the conviction of ‘gross indecency’. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ with another man and was forced to undergo so-called ‘organo-therapy’ - chemical castration. Two years later, he killed himself with cyanide, aged just 41. Alan Turing was driven to a terrible despair and early death by the nation he’d done so much to save. This remains a shame on the UK government and UK history. A pardon can go to some way to healing this damage. It may act as an apology to many of the other gay men, not as well known as Alan Turing, who were subjected to these laws.’
ASM qualifies higher-k gate process for 14nm ASM International announced the
successful demonstration of a new 14nm high-k gate dielectric process that achieved less than 6 angstroms equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) at a customer’s 14nm R&D line, an improvement of about 40% from the current advanced nodes. The new high-k process improves device performance by enabling faster switching and lower leakage current, while reconfirming the extendibility of hafnium based high-k dielectrics. Using ASM’s most advanced Pulsar ALD tool, a hafnium based material with a higher- k value than the current baseline was qualified at the customer’s R&D facility. “ASM was the first to introduce
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hafnium-based high-k dielectrics for transistor gates, and we are now working with key device manufacturing leaders on scaling next-generation high- k metal gate technology,” said Glen Wilk, Sr. Director of ALD Products at
ASM. “The new process leverages ASM’s extensive understanding of high-k metal gates, our technology leadership in ALD, and the extendibility of our Pulsar ALD process module. Together, these three factors give ASM a clear advantage in providing our customers with the smoothest transition to manufacturing nodes below 20nm, for both planar and 3D devices.” Developed on the Pulsar ALD tool without the need for additional clustered process steps, the new process achieves less than 6Å EOT while maintaining gate leakage below 1A/cm2 to meet 14 nm high-k metal gate (HKMG) log is technology requirements.
www.euroasiasemiconductor.com Issue V 2011
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