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

What about the quantum barier?

[Edmund Blackadder]

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.

Re:What about the quantum barier?

[NerveGas]

>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