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Frozen Chip from IBM hits 500 GHz
sideshow2004 writes "EETimes is reporting this morning that IBM and Georiga Tech have demonstrated a 500 GHz Silicon-germanium (SiGe) chip, operating at 4.5 Kelvins. The 'frozen chip' was fabricated by IBM on 200mm wafers, and, at room temperature, the circuits operated at approximately 350 GHz."
TFA wasn't clear... I assume this wasn't running a larger fully synchronized CPU with memory and multi-level cache at 500GHz, but is instead running a smaller number of transistors at that speed?
I can understand your concern. However, after IBM backs this up, it forces me to do more research (which, I haven't finsihed yet obviously).
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
350 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 (375 809 638 400) cycles per second divided by the distance light travels in a second (299 792 458 000 mm / s) is 1.2 mm. Just thought I'd throw that in.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
You are right, sort of. This could be useful for some very specialized processors that are very simple but need to do these simple operations very fast.
A CPU like the one we use now in PCs can't go much higher than 10GHz simply because, at light speed, an electron wouldn't have enough time to make it through the long circuit paths before the next clock cycle.
Pah! My flashlight runs at 750000 Ghz (7.5 x 10^14 Hz). Its portable, has a 12 hour battery life, lets me see in the dark AND sports a durable andonized aluminum casing.
Beat that IBM.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4