Company News: IBM uses self-assembling material to etch holes in chips

NEW YORK – 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.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has used nanoscale self-assembled materials to build things that machines aren’t capable of doing,” said John Kelly, IBM’s vice president of development.

Kelly said molecules in the material fall into a defined pattern similar to how snowflakes form into symmetrical six-sided shapes.

“After nearly three years of sagging sales, clothing retailer Gap Inc. is trying to figure out how many workers to lay off as part of a cost-cutting effort designed to lift its profits.

Responding to a story published Wednesday in the New York Post, a Gap spokesman confirmed job cuts are inevitable as the San Francisco-based company responds to Wall Street’s pressures to bring its expenses more in line with its eroding revenue.

“Clearly, some level of job cuts will be necessary,” Gap spokesman Greg Rossiter said. “These are never easy, but they will be a relatively small percentage of the overall work force.”

Gap employs about 154,000 workers, meaning a 1 to 2 percent reduction in jobs could still translate into 1,500 to 3,000 pink slips.

“Liquidating subprime lender New Century Financial Corp. says it has dropped some top executives from its bankruptcy bonus plan but maintains that a new law restricting bonuses doesn’t apply to those who stand to share more than $1 million in extra pay over the coming weeks.

In court papers filed Tuesday evening, New Century sketched out a revised scheme for bankruptcy bonuses for 34 high-ranking executives, one that replaces a package of executive rewards that drew criticism from U.S. Trustee Kelly Beaudin Stapleton.

Chief Executive Brad Morrice, who was in the original bonus plan, does not appear to be on the extra-pay list in the revised version. However, people named by Morrice or New Century’s board to policy-making positions are still in the company’s bankruptcy bonus pool.