IBM accelerates silicon to more than 500 GHz

Somers (NY) - IBM today claimed the crown for the world's fastest chip, at least in terms of clock speed: The company said it was able to achieve frequencies "above 500 GHz" by "cryogenically freezing" the chip. And the company apparently does not want to stop there: Using silicon-germanium (SiGe) technologies, IBM is aiming for near-THz speeds.

The announcement is one result of a project run by researchers from IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology, which intends to "explore the ultimate speed limits of silicon-germanium (SiGe) devices." According to IBM, the material enables chips to operate at faster speeds when cooling temperatures are decreased.

Chips with extreme frequencies may not make their way into PCs, but - according to IBM - may see potential applications in commercial communications systems, defense electronics, space exploration, and remote sensing. The company announced its silicon-germanium technology back in 1989 and began high-volume shipments of such chips in 1998. IBM claims that it already has shipped "hundreds of millions" of SiGe chips.

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  • sabot00
    First comment?
    Reply
  • alyoshka
    Lol I'm back to the past....5 years ahead of time..... and it's still not here.....
    we're still at 4.5 GHz.... and it's already 2012....
    Reply
  • onanonanon
    sabot00First comment?And it would have been the last if it weren't for the necrolink! How long do these things stay archived, anyway?
    Reply
  • freggo
    THz Clock speed is nice, bur it is like a 1,000t oil tanker crossing the oceans at 200knots.
    Impressive, but useless as a 300,000t tanker doing just 15knots will move more 'data'.
    Bottom line, instead of having 1 super fact CPU it is better to have 1,000 slow cores.

    And they should not be identical either; but a mix of specialized ones.
    Audio cored, Graphics Cores, Database cores etc.
    Than a program loading will request from the OS the mix of specialty cored needed to do it's job.
    When the program terminates the cores will be returned to the pool and turned OFF until the next program needs some of them.
    Saves energy too that way; compared to a 500GHz chip idling with nothing to do than running the Aquarium screen saver.



    Reply
  • billybobser
    So much for bulldozer records
    Reply
  • bin1127
    Bump!
    Reply
  • willwayne
    http://www.bulldozerrecords.com/ ?
    Reply