Elizabeth Connor

Every summer the Stanford University in Palo Alto hosts the Hot Chips Conference sponsored by the IEEE. Besides reflecting trends in the semiconductor industry, it also explores the forefront of technology. But the emphasis is always on the technical details of real chips, not on theoretical research or marketing hype.

Processors for Workstations and Communcation Devices

At the International Solid-State Circuit Conference in San Francisco several companies described designs for microprocessors with 1 GHz clock speed. AMD demonstrated a system with a 1 GHz Athlon from its fab in Dresden, Germany.

Transmeta, the secretive semiconductor company from Santa Clara, finally introduced the first two chips of their new processor line named Crusoe at the end of January. With a different software-based design approach these processors promise to deliver high-performance at very little power consumption.