IBM overclocks chip to 500GHz!!!
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Chip breaks speed record in deep freeze
Michael Kanellos
CNET News.com
June 20, 2006, 09:15 BST
IBM and Georgia Tech scientists cryogenically froze a silicon-germanium chip at -451 F to test the material's speed potential
IBM and Georgia Tech have coaxed a chip to run at 500GHz, a record for a silicon-based device, by dropping the temperature to minus 451 degrees Fahrenheit.
The experiment is part of a project to explore the ultimate speed limits of silicon-germanium (SiGe) chips. SiGe chips are similar to standard silicon chips, but they also contain germanium for better performance and lower power consumption.
Adding germanium, however, increases the price of producing wafers and chips that come out of the wafers, so SiGe chips are typically only found in a few select markets. IBM has sold hundreds of millions of SiGe chips since it began selling them in 1998, but the cell phone industry gobbles up billions of plain silicon chips annually. (Germanium is sprinkled into standard silicon chips: Intel adds minute amounts of the element to create strained silicon in its processors).
At room temperature, the IBM-Georgia Tech chip operates at 350GHz, or 350 billion cycles per second. That's far faster than standard PC processors today, which range from 3.8GHz to 1.8GHz. But SiGe chips can gain additional performance in colder temperatures.
To that end, IBM and Georgia Tech scientists turned down the temperature and cryogenically froze the chip at minus 451 F. It's about as cold as things get. An extremely cold temperature like that is found naturally only in outer space, but can be artificially achieved on Earth using ultracold materials such as liquid helium. Absolute zero comes at minus 459 F.
SiGe chips, the scientists theorised, could eventually hit 1 terahertz, or 1 trillion cycles a second.
Ultimately, high-performance SiGe chips could be used in military systems, space exploration vehicles and remote sensing. -
IBM overclocks chip to 500GHz
By Tony Smith
20th June 2006 09:14 GMT
Boffins from IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) have produced what they claim is the world's fastest silicon chip thanks to what must be the acme of overclocking. The researchers reached a clock speed of 500GHz by reducing its temperature to just 4.5° above absolute zero.
The feat was part of the team's exploration of fourth-generation Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) devices, which IBM and GIT are investigation for future comms chip applications. The scientists wanted to see just how fast such a chip could be persuaded to run without malfunctioning or, in extreme cases, melting.
If cooling a machine down to -268.5°C seems a trifle impractical, take heart from the boffins' other efforts, which saw the chip running at 350GHz at room temperature - rather better than the 2GHz commercial products for communications applications typically run at today. ® -
At what cost?
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There are always doing about speed.
But high speed without memory or cache is still limited.
Imagine a 0.5Thz using a 7200rpm harddisk (around 50Mbps), getting information and storing information is far too unsynchronize. Speed is important, but storage and memory is equally important too. -
wad the fark???
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?? who you scolding??Originally posted by Classyfied:wad the fark???
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PC applications may not require processing power of such speeds...i am not saying it will not be so in future but right now unless the cost of such processors on desktop PCs is comfortable to PC builders the applications of such processors may lay on with research and specialised trades as written in the article.
Also unless graphics card ram speeds, hard disk etc can keep up with the processor nothing's changed with a 500Ghz processor. Ithink Hdd's still the slowest hardware component in a PC build. -
Well, Hdd side they can use the ultra raid linking and distributing to 24 cluster of 16 raided hard disc array...Originally posted by newmanmback:PC applications may not require processing power of such speeds...i am not saying it will not be so in future but right now unless the cost of such processors on desktop PCs is comfortable to PC builders the applications of such processors may lay on with research and specialised trades as written in the article.
Also unless graphics card ram speeds, hard disk etc can keep up with the processor nothing's changed with a 500Ghz processor. Ithink Hdd's still the slowest hardware component in a PC build.
If some smart ass can come up with a 350GHz Processor, I dun see any problem with other peripherials....
Interconnecting technology for memory module can also run in parellal like the hard disc raiding and most likely be optical.
dun think the graphic will be a concern since you dun expect to play game on this type of system...besides how fast do the card need to fool your eyes?
but a proccessor of that speed is really hard to believe... -
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yeh i agree...well a frog like me most prob stared in awe at a 3ghz processor but something like 500ghz is something outta this world imo...as for the hdd thing running raid do not really speed up overall computing experience lah...running in parrallel bebefits graphics rendering, editing etc and game loading times...otherwise raid means redundant array of independent disks and is most desireed and benificial in 365 round the clock applications as in servers amd critical computer applications callin for data/ sys backups and/ recovery in the event of sys crashes or haltOriginally posted by Twincat:Well, Hdd side they can use the ultra raid linking and distributing to 24 cluster of 16 raided hard disc array...
If some smart ass can come up with a 350GHz Processor, I dun see any problem with other peripherials....
Interconnecting technology for memory module can also run in parellal like the hard disc raiding and most likely be optical.
dun think the graphic will be a concern since you dun expect to play game on this type of system...besides how fast do the card need to fool your eyes?
but a proccessor of that speed is really hard to believe...