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IBM Creates World's Fastest Semiconductor Circuits

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-only-a-model-shhh dept.

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!'"

6 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. That's incredible! by Emad+el-Haraty · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Combine this technology with the recent advent of the broadband laser, and we will be seeing some fast networking, indeed.

    My partner, Sean, worked at Cisco for a while, before the economic implosion, and heard some things about 100Gbit networking projects in the works. It'll be really sweet to see this hit the market in a couple of years.

  2. What about the quantum barier? by Edmund+Blackadder · · Score: 5, Interesting


    When in engineering school (a couple of years ago) my professor declared that we are moving towards the end of the speed and size improvements of microchips, because soon the assumptions aboout newtonian physics, on which circuit design is based on, will stop being reliable.

    Usually you dont have to worry about quantumn effects (electrons tunneling and such things), because there are enough electrons to statisticaly average out the quantumn effects into the classical model.

    But when you increase frequency you usually have to decrease the size of the components (so transistors switch faster). But if you decrease size too much you will not have enough electrons passing trough your circuit, to ensure the signal follows classical laws.

    Well I guess the quantumn barrier was a lot further than i thought it was.

    Or maybe IBM are not decreasing the size of their transistors but increasing voltages to make circuits switch faster.

    1. Re:What about the quantum barier? by NerveGas · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >When in engineering school (a couple of years ago) my professor declared that we are moving towards the end of the speed and size improvements of microchips, because soon the assumptions aboout newtonian physics, on which circuit design is based on, will stop being reliable.

      And they've been saying that for over ten years.... and so far, it just hasn't happened.

      >Well I guess the quantumn barrier was a lot further than i thought it was.

      That's the problem with those pundits - when they make those statements, they assume that no more technological advancements will be found. And even if that were right, there's still a lot of the current CPU-manufacturing process that can be tweaked and milked.

      Look at some of the recent technological findings - like copper interconnects and SOI. It took a couple of years before they even began to see introductory usage, and SOI is still far from being mainstream. And then again, a lot of chips are still being made on the 0.17 micron process. And to top it off, 0.10 and even 0.07-micron processes are in the works. Even without any new technological discoveries, the move to 0.07 micron SOI chips has the potential to last us through several more 18-month generations!

      So what about other technologies? There's another manufacturing trick that's being refined right now that allows the crevisces between transisters to be made deeper than they are wide, which will allow us to pack even more transistors on a chip. And why stop with aluminum interconnects? Find a way to use silver. And there was a recent announcement about using stressed lattices to get even faster propagation. There are a lot of developments in the works. Yes, eventually we will hit a quantum limit - but I'm confident that it won't happen any time soon.

      steve

      --
      Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
  3. Judging from Moore's law... by Daniel+Wood · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Which I believe states that transister count doubles every 18 months, and I have noticed that MHz count on Intel CPUs tend to follow the same line, we should be ready for this speed CPU(Given Intel's trend) in our desktops in another 8.25 years, better known as Q3 2010.

  4. Not that far fetched by F.O.Dobbs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    According to Moore's Law we should hit 100 ghz in about 9 years (assuming 2ghz*2^6).

  5. Marketing Hype!!!! by pagercam2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Intel and IBM and others gain headlines every few weeks with these new mirical technologies, and evryone (who isn't technical enough), assumes that means that 100GHz pentiums (or put yor favorite processor here) will be out by Xmas. Transistors need to be atleast 10-100 times faster as a ring oscilator as they can be for a reliable gate (AND, XOR, NOT ....). Oscillations are sine waves, digital gates require sharp transitions so you need to be a minimum of 10 slower to get reliable timing characteristics. There is also a world of difference between getting one transistor to work in the lab in nice quiet conditions and getting 400 million transistors working together on a chip (ALU, MMU, L1 cache, L2 cache ......) by the time you factor all those and having balanced timing across a chip, means that a simple circuit at 100GHz yields a produces a 10GHz processor. Intell supposedly has P4 at 3GHz already so just to stay competitive 10GHz will be required in a couple of years no big deal, but certainly it will be a couple more years before 100GHz chips surface. The problem has been and continues to be logic is getting faster, but memory is only inching ahead, its like having a dragster that can hit 300MPH, but not having any roads without curves.