Pushing silicon to its all-potential limits - for long, here comes an unfathomable 500 GHz processor, a souvenir for all tech savvy, from researchers at US.
What’s this about
Researchers at IBM and Georgia Tech have broken through all limitations in the Silicon Valley, claiming to have developed a first silicon-based chip that is competent enough to operate at speeds of over 500 GHz - that is over 100 times faster than those present chips on your desktop.
The prototype will eventually speed up the wireless networking - but to develop this record flouting device, the researchers had to freeze the chip with liquid helium.
This and the current
Most microchips of late are made from silicon and germanium (that allows chip to work faster and consume less power), for the simple reason that the manufacturing technology is reliable and cheap. However, over time, there has been a realization that silicon cannot match other materials when it comes to processing speeds - and this is exactly where the 500 GHz development takes on pushing those wary into revised thought.
Formation of the chip
Using germanium with silicon helps chips to run faster as they are cooled, improvising on the similar track - the concept chip was super-cooled to -268.5C, using liquid helium - to get the temperatures down to just above absolute zero. The chip can easily do a 350 GHz at room temperature and on further cooling the chip was able to perform half a trillion calculations every second, at mesmerizing speeds of 500 GHz.
Next
The researchers are entirely satisfied with their concept and confident of going further on from here to get these chips running at 1000 GHz. This prototype has basically proven that the silicon chips still have a lot of potential, whether it’s for speed or efficiency, and has also cleared notion if any otherwise.
[Source: BBC]
