IBM on Monday joined Intel in the race to create a speedier computer microprocessor, and said its superfast chips would be on the market by next year.
IBM's announcement, made at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco, followed an announcement from Intel that it had created equally speedy chips with transistors that were a mere three atoms, or 0.03 microns, thick.
IBM's new chips are based on a technology that allows the company to make chip circuits as small as 0.13 microns. The smallest transistors currently available are 0.18 microns.
Transistor gates are the on-off switches that allows the computer chip to make its calculations. Generally, the smaller the switch, the faster the calculations.
Although not as thin as the Intel chip circuits in planning, IBM chips will achieve their speed by using new materials that control heat output, which is a big obstacle to improving speed.
IBM's new chips will contain new insulating chemicals, called "low-k dielectric", that will shield the delicate microscopic components from heat.
"The smaller circuitry and improved materials can pack more processing power on a single chip, helping electronic products from computers to cell phones support new, performance-hungry applications like speech recognition, fingerprint authentication and wireless video," IBM said in a statement.
"Our new chip-making recipe integrates more complex, high-performance ingredients onto a chip than ever before," said Bijan Davari, IBM vice president of technology and emerging products.
IBM said it will begin incorporating the new technology in its manufacturing processes next year. Chips with the ten-fold increase in speed will be on the market by 2005, both companies said.
The new chips from IBM and Intel are expected to allow computers to run at 10 gigahertz, far speedier than the fastest 1.5GHz models on the market today.
Intel also formally announced it breakthrough at Monday's conference.
Computers running at 10GHz (the fastest chips today run at 1.5GHz) can complete 20 million calculations in the time a speeding bullet travels 30 centimeters (one foot), or two million calculations in the time it travels 25 millimeters (one inch), said Intel -- SAN FRANCISCO (AFP)
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