500GHz CPU/GPU?

sledgy

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/06/20/ibm.chip.reut/index.html

Interesting stuff. Real-time radiosity anyone?

SHEPEIRO

yay realtime fart animations in game woot woot, including crowd dynamics (running away) and facial anim (wrinkling of nose)

Neo_God

at first I read it as 500MHz, but 500GHz? Damn! Even at room temperature it ran at 300. I mean, I would just be happy with a 5GHz processor right now, haha.

I can't wait to see what sort of stuff comes from this in the next few years.

Joshua Stubbles

Real time radisity can be done on current GPU's. It's just too damn taxing to use it in a REAL game
But hey, you can have a hell of a nice GI lit BOX in a BOX room. hehe

500ghz though, that's crazy. I'll take a 10ghz please

sonic

yeah, the problem is it's not a cpu when the transistors are actually put into the design of a processor, you don't get even close to that. some guy on digg said it's roughly 1/10th if you have a simple design, and even less with more complexity.

[ QUOTE ]
The reported speed is not that of a microprocessor but that of a single transistor, specifically a single SiGe BJT transistor. When they talk about the maximum operating frequency of the device they are referring to the peak fT, or the maximum oscillation frequency. This measurement is made on a single transistor using "small-signals" from an RF (radio frequency) network analyzer. This is not the same frequency you will get if you were to use this transistor inside a computer chip. To give you an idea, current 90-nm CMOS transistors used in modern microprocessors have a peak fT of ~150 GHz, but we only see processors with clock frequencies less than 4 GHz.

It is well known that BJT transistors are much faster than MOSFET transistors used in today's microprocessors. We are unlikely to see this technology used in typical microprocessors as BJTs consume too much static power. This transistor will likely be applied to the RF front end of telecommunication devices.

[/ QUOTE ]

ebagg

I'll gladly buy a second case to house just my CPU, there's already practically a need for a second case with some of the quad-video card set ups I've seen articles for!

Xenobond

Maybe I'd actually be able to switch between applications with no hiccups??!?!

motives

as long as you dont use Maya (har har )

KDR_11k

That thing could increase the speed of EVERYTHING. I just wonder what it does for power consumption, faster switching should reduce the consumption per switch but how will it perform in real life?

swampbug

::intercom::

Cleanup on Keys "F, G, B, H, J, U, T , R , V, N, M , spacebar, 5, 6, 7 , f4 , f3,"

Ferg

I'd buy that for a dollar

KDR_11k

Man, you could get an entire pack of transistors for a dollar.

Mark Dygert

I wonder if they will have a home version that lets us switch the plutonium fuel rods out on the fly so we don't have to power the beast down or interrupt all those movies everyone will be pulling down.

WarPeanut

OMG It would revolutionize freecell.

Ryno

Yeah Vig, that or a little cold fusion reactor. (Depending on your memory type.)

KDR_11k

Vig: A logic gate only uses power while it's changing between two states. This transistor switches in a fraction of the time a normal transistor takes.

Soccerman18

Stinks that it doesn't go into any more detail as to how the germanium has an effect and why it helps speed things up, if it allowed them to shrink the transistor even more or require fewer e-'s to reach the potential difference. Depending on how it is used, I'm curious as to what would be needed to cool this thing.

[edit]I just did some digging around and here's what I found. The germanium is used to create a silicon germanium alloy, SiGe. When a silicon layer is put on top of SiGe the Si atoms are stretched apart to line up with the spacing of the SiGe. That's pretty cool cause that would reduce the resistance of the transistor and allow it to charge up and down more quickly, and could reduce the amount of heat per switch. Would still be interesting to see how much of a drop in heat there is, would have to be pretty significant for it to not have melted after switching at those speeds for a while.

KDR_11k

Isn't that what's known as strained silicon tech?

Soccerman18

yup

KDR_11k

So what's new about it? Was this the first time it works or does this add better straining or something?