Frozen Chip Operates at 500,000,000,000 Cycles/Second at Near Absolute Zero
SOMERS, New York, USA & ATLANTA - 20 Jun 2006:
By comparison, 500 GHz is more than 250 times faster than today's cell phones, which typically operate at approximately 2 GHz. Computer simulations suggest that the silicon-germanium (SiGe) technology used in the chip could ultimately support even higher (near-TeraHertz – 1,000 GHz) operational frequencies even at room temperature.
“For the first time, Georgia Tech and IBM have demonstrated that speeds of half a trillion cycles per second can be achieved in a commercial silicon-based technology, using large wafers and silicon-compatible low-cost manufacturing techniques,” said John D. Cressler, Byers Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a researcher in the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) at Georgia Tech. “This work redefines the upper bounds of what is possible using silicon-germanium nanotechnology techniques.”
SiGe is a process technology in which the electrical properties of silicon, the material underlying virtually all modern microchips, is augmented with germanium to make chips operate more efficiently. SiGe boosts performance and reduces power consumption in chips that go into cellular phones and other advanced communication devices. IBM first announced its SiGe technology in 1989, and later introduced SiGe into the industry's first standard, high-volume SiGe chips in October 1998. Since that time, it has shipped hundreds of millions of SiGe chips.
Better understanding the physics of silicon-germanium devices – and ultimately the circuits that can be built from them – will provide important clues to improvements needed in the future.
Silicon-germanium technology has been of great interest to the electronics industry because it allows substantial transistor performance improvements to be achieved while using fabrication techniques compatible with standard high-volume silicon-based manufacturing processes. By introducing germanium into silicon wafers at the atomic scale, engineers can boost dramatically performance while retaining the many advantages of silicon.
Source: IBM press release
