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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)."

2 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. This clockless thing must be caching on fast.. by k98sven · · Score: 4, Redundant

    .. otherwise people would've noticed this has been
    posted before (sept 15)

  2. Re:Old idea by Yobgod+Ababua · · Score: 4, Redundant

    It's not even that they "aren't good enough", it's more a matter of inertia.

    Currently all the training, design tools, verification tools, etc, are geared towards solving the particular problems that come up through synchronous design. Asynchronous design avoids some of those problems completely, but has others of it's own.

    Major companies are unwilling to trade a known set of problems for an unknown set.

    When some of the small start-ups that are currently pursuing asynchronous chips release product and show that those problems can be practically and regularly solved then the world will sit up and take notice, but until then we're just another 'technological curiosity'.