The world’s fastest silicon based micro chip has been invented by researchers.
The scientists have successfully designed a micro chip which is 100 times faster than the current desktop PC chips. The prototype functions at 500 gigahertz(GHz) speed.
To achieve these target researchers from IBM and Georgia Institute of Technology super cooled the chip with Helium. They claim that this invention can speed up the wireless network and also reduce the costs of mobile phones.
The experiment was carried out to explore the speed limits of the devices made from silicon and germanium. To increase the efficiency of silicon chips in mobile phones Germanium is already being used. This helps the chips to run faster using less power. The chips tend to run faster as they are cooled.
In order to speed up the chip researchers super cooled the prototype chip to -268.5C using Helium, which is just above absolute zero. By doing this the chip was able to perform half of a trillion calculations each second. Which is a speed of 500 GHz. Whereas a desktop PC is able to perform about five billion calculations per second.
At room temperature the chip managed to performed 350 billion calculations per second. But the team of researchers believe that at room temperature the chip can be made to run at 1000 GHz or one Terahertz.
This invention shows a new generation silicon based integrated circuit science.
Posted under Computers, General, Latest News
This post was written by Kevin on September 23, 2008
