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Clockless Chips

Posted by Hemos on from the really-think-different dept.

iarkin writes "TechReview is running a very interesting article about clockless chips. Clockless, or asynchronous, chips work very much faster and consume less power than their synchronous equivalents (Intel hade some experiments on these chips back in -97, the results showed that the asynchronous chips were three times faster and consumed only half the power)."

13 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Never take off... by Octal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Clockless chips will never take off. How are people supposed to draw incorrect conclusions about which chip is the fastest when there's no MHz/GHz rating?

    1. Re:Never take off... by 91degrees · · Score: 3, Funny

      Easy enough. Go for a die size rating, or number of transistors. Even better, make up a number based on die size, chip size, voltage and number of bits, and use that as the standard.

    2. Re:Never take off... by xmedar · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ok, I think we need a poll for this new benchmark name -

      o Gibson
      o Babbage
      o Turing
      o Stephenson
      o CowboyNeal

      I just want to see the look on a salemans face when he says this new processor is rated at 10 Giga CowboyNeals...

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
  2. AMD Wins. by Nikau · · Score: 3, Funny

    In other news, AMD abandons all current R&D to work on clockless chips so they can win the clock-speed wars against Intel...

    --
    There is no escape from The Muffin.
  3. Duh! by chinton · · Score: 3, Funny

    If there is no clock, how do they know that they are 3 times faster? :-D

  4. Re:This clockless thing must be caching on fast.. by Reckless+Visionary · · Score: 3, Funny

    ah, who's counting? :)

    --
    I think I'll stop here.
  5. My Clockless Experiences by SanLouBlues · · Score: 4, Funny

    I took the clock out of my computer with an xacto knife. I immediately noticed an infinite difference in the speed at which it ran.

    I also have an asynchronous clock ever since the spring in my wristwatch snapped.

  6. clockless by NeoTomba · · Score: 4, Funny

    Clockless chips would result, perhaps, in the most interesting (funny?) marketing.

    Intel would develop a standard way of indicating performance. Based on something their particular chips are good at. We'll say they release the Pentium Clockless 1000, Pentium Clockless 2000 and Pentium Clockless 3000.

    AMD would, if trends indicate anything, market them using performance ratings. Instead of deciding performance based on the intel standard, they would have new names to indicate that their processors, in some situations, are faster than their Intel counterparts. They'd probably be called the AMD Athlon Clockless XP 1100+, and so on.

    In response, Intel would start releasing worse processors, but with higher numbers. Pentium Clockless II 5000 would be their flagship.

    AMD would continue making their processors in the traditional manner, but would adopt a new naming mechanism. AMD Ahtlon Clockless Performance XP Super Fantastic 6000, maybe.

    Repeat ad nauseum.

    -NeoTomba

  7. Clockless applications by Violet+Null · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...chips work very much faster...

    ...Intel hade some experiments...

    Unfortunately, these chips only seem to have half the spell-check and grammar-check capability.

  8. The One. by atathert · · Score: 2, Funny
    Do not try to beat the Clock, for that is impossible. Only try to realize the truth.


    The truth?


    There is no clock.

  9. Re:same reason we still run gasoline engines..... by cburley · · Score: 3, Funny
    The last time I read about clockless computing, the chip stopped working[...]

    Then stop reading about it, silly!

    --
    Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
  10. worse than that .... by taniwha · · Score: 2, Funny
    no two 'identical' chips will run at the same rate - just like the overclockers people will fight over 'known good batch numbers'.



    Or more likely Intel (by then the only CPU company left of course) will start binning by actualy performance - look for "runs Win 95 fast enough", "runs NT fast enough" and the expensive "runs XP a bit" speed grades

  11. Re:Not Necessarily by AstroJetson · · Score: 3, Funny

    How 'bout: "So fast it can execute an infinite loop in 15 seconds."

    --
    Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.