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

[SuiteSisterMary]

Almost makes you wonder if we'll move away from the 'big CPU, big whack of RAM' model to the 'bunch of little bitty CPUs, each with their own whack of RAM, and they do their own thing' model.

Re:110GHZ circuit != 110GHz chip

[dhovis]

It is more than a transistor. The article at the NYTimes (I'm too lazy to link right now), said that IBM had previously anounced a transistor which could switch at 260 GHz and this anouncement is simply the next step, an entire circuit, but probably not a whole CPU.