IBM Creates World's Fastest Semiconductor Circuits

Todd Heidesch writes: "'IBM announced it has created the world's fastest semiconductor circuit, operating at speeds of over 110 GigaHertz (GHz) and processing an electrical signal in 4.3 trillionths of a second.' IBM expects the new technology to be pumping out 100 gigabit/sec network switching chips by the end of the year (on an optimistic schedule, I presume)." dr_zeus contributes a link to this Reuters article running on Wired (also fairly thin) on the release, writing: "Granted, this isn't a PC chip, but one wonders how long it will be before we hear 'dude, you've got a 110GHz Dell!'"

Comments

Re:Hitting the Physical Limits

[taniwha]

actually on cu/si waveguides (ie normal wires on a die) it's way slower than that.

Even at today's high-end speeds (2GHz) 100 cycles (50nS) is fast for dram access. This is why keeping fast chips stoked these days requires heavy caching (L1/2/even 3 on-chip is a must and heading for 50% plus of die area)

Wires

[vlad_petric]

Well, don't expect a Pentium 110GHz yet ... The problem with microprocessor design is more and more the time it takes the signal to propagate through wires than the time to propagate through gates.

Did you know that P4 has a couple of pipeline stages that do nothing but propagate signal? (yes, they pipelined the wire ...)

The Raven