IBM Processors

[arn]

Jeremy West wrote in with the following:

IBM just announced they have functional 110 Gigahertz chips that will be ready for market at the end of this year. No specific mention of PPC, but very interesing indeed. Imagine a 100 Gigahertz Mac by MWSF 2003.

Apparently the new chip is based on "silicon germanium chip-making":

Silicon germanium also includes layers of germanium, a substance that is like silicon but which makes a transistor that can switch faster and perform better.

We'll see....

 

[Choppaface]

damn

 

[ThorPrime]

If only true

as much as this seem fabulous but I have a feeling this technology will spark no big improvements for anyone anytime soon.

 

[mischief]

I repeat:

Lemme see:

110,000,000,000 Hz chip on a 333,000,000 Hz Bus. Bus speed is 3% of processor speed at that hypothetical, which is quite fast for a bus. Which means that 97% of the time the processor is blue-balled. Why bother?

Sure it's fast, but how do you keep up with it? Give you machine Meth?

 

[Biggles]

yeah! let's all pay $50,000 for a computer that is almost "too" powerful

 

[rekras]

wonder what the price will be on this? i hope, but it's doubtful that this chip will ship on macs...

 

[Quark]

It's only a microchip

Before everyone get's too far ahead of themselves, understand that they are not talking about producing ANY CPUs this year.

They stated that they are making some microchips and say nothing about making any sort of Central Processing Units (CPU) for this year.

The technology is mind boggling. We are getting closer to the Star Trek: TNG era.

If they can mass produce these babies, there is no reason to think that the price will be that high by the end of next year.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a PPC system, close to 100GHz under $5,000, in Q4 2003.

Take Care!

 

[jaykk]

yes, its the fastest communications chip

Its not a CPU, its the fasterst communications chip
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&u=/nm/20020225/tc_nm/tech_ibm_dc_22

 

[Gelfin]

"Too powerful?" I'm recognizing words here, but you're losing me somewhere on the idea.

Eh, it's a good thing IBM's raising the bar like this. You'll probably need a 100GHz CPU for the next version of Windows anyway.

 

[Yamson]

Come on, people...

Don't expect to see this in a Mac or any computer any time soon. This is a COMMUNICATIONS chip designed for use in high-speed network routers. The circuitry is much different than that of a desktop computer CPU. There are many more issues involved with getting a CPU up to those speeds simply because the wiring is that much more complicated.

Also, if you read the story you'll notice that IBM developed this chip to replace their 80 GHz version also built on the same silicon-germanium technology... you don't see that in desktops, now do you? And that chip has been out for a while (I'm assuming...). Be realistic. According to Moore's Law -- to which the last 30 years have conformed to fairly well -- we should be seeing 110 GHz chips in desktops in MAYBE 2010 or so. We're not going to suddenly jump 3000% in clock speeds in one year.

What is worth noting, however, is that this is a new manufacturing technology that has the POTENTIAL to take desktop computers to faster speeds. Silicon is beginning to reach its limits, so engineers are and have been rapidly developing new ways to extend Moore's law. This is an excellent possibilty, but right now there are simply too many issues to overcome to make this a consumer-level desktop computer CPU in the several years.

 

[Biggles]

Originally posted by Gelfin
"Too powerful?" I'm recognizing words here, but you're losing me somewhere on the idea.

eh, I'm just exaggerating a bit. I just don't see the need for something with that much power yet. I mean it would be great if it was a reasonable price, but i doubt that'll happen for a very long time.

Maybe if they used the same technology to produce a 25-50 ghz machine i'd get a little more hopeful of it ever coming to market anytime soon

 

[dualburn001]

These chips aren't going to be in home computers for at least 5 years. The demand for a chip like this now is limited. It cost them millions to produce it and theyre gonna charge a good amount for it to.
Who's gonna buy it? IBM will put it in it's main servers and then ship it to Microsoft and Sun.
Doesn't mkae me feel very happy.

Dualburn001

 

[Gelfin]

Yeah, I know it's not realistic anytime soon, but I do get this silly mental image of Steve standing on the stage at the MacWorld keynote, saying, "Now if you look here, we have a top-of-the-line Windows machine, and we'll start rendering this poster-sized FraxFlame image using KPT5 in Photoshop."

[Windows machine begins grinding away. You see a smidge of progress bar appear at the left end of the meter.]

"Now let's see it on the new PowerMac. Here we've got Photoshop set up."
*click* *bloop!*
"Oh, sorry, did you blink? Wanna see it again?"
*click* *bloop!*

[Repeats two or three more times, grinning like a fiend.]

[Windows machine displays another two pixel-widths of progress bar.]

 

[buffsldr]

IBM Buyout

And just like that an Apple buyout seems more likely.

If IBM does buy Apple, I guess the pee-cee world can hire Apples "MegaHertz Myth" Public Relations Department.

 

[Xapplimatic]

Hmmm..

Just the view of a tech here..

Perhaps a bad comparison.. but if a Germanium version of a transistor (which have been out for years and years!) costs several fold what the standard silicon version costs, that probably means IF they could make a PPC CPU out of Germanium, the cost would be several fold over the cost of silicon ones.. too expensive for average joes. The advantage of Germanium is that yes, it's faster, but more than that, it has a much wider thermal range meaning that it's perfect for laptops! (= less cooling needed).. and yes, we won't see germanium CPUs any time soon.. I don't recall any manufacturers mentioning that germanium was on their to-do list for CPUs... but hey, they can make a lightning fast 555 timing chip!

 

[rubikcube]

110 ghz won't help

The problem with having a 110 ghz chip is that you have to do a lot more than increase the clock rate. The memory, north and southbridge units, and pretty much everything else on the board would have to be sped up to incredibly high speeds as well. Heck, even a titanium geforce4 would slow that thing down. Every part on the computer would have to be made with the new manufacturing process in order to benefit. That isn't going to happen any time soon. I would guess maybe 5 years down the road we will start seeing this technology emerge, but not in 110 ghz models. I would say that we might be seeing 10-20ghz. The reason for this is that the different architectures are going to run at different speeds with the new process and no one really knows what is going on in that area.

RubikCube

In the meantime, i hope to get my new dual 1ghz within the next 6 weeks. Hopefully it won't be overshadowed by 110ghz powerpc's by that time.

 

[littlejim]

Re: IBM Buyout

Originally posted by buffsldr
And just like that an Apple buyout seems more likely.

If IBM does buy Apple, I guess the pee-cee world can hire Apples "MegaHertz Myth" Public Relations Department.

But surely that'll be renamed the GigaHertz Myth department?


LittleJim
----------

He's fallen in the water

 

[ibjoshua]

just wondering....

where do some of you guys find the time to write such gar-bo-ley!
dream on.

wouldn't you just like a 2 gig mac?

 

[mymemory]

At that speed I would loose what is left of my hair...

 

[mischief]

How about just the Altivec portion?

It's prohibitively expensive as a whole chip just in materials cost. Is there a way to do a Germanium-on-Silicon hybrid chip? Say you just fused a section of Germanium on the wafer per chip area. Cut the Altivec on the Germanium, cut the bulk of the processor on Silicon.

If nothing else it WOULD be terribly quick.

 

[motive8]

Growing Germaniums

I always find that my Germaniums grow best in a light topsoil and compost mix. Of course, the best compost is made from a combination of shredded monochrome CRT's mixed with all the RAM i have that no longer works in the machines i keep upgrading to.
Companion planting old 520c laptops are recommended. The flies are attracted to them instead of the Germaniums.

 

[StuPid QPid]

Re: Growing Germaniums

Originally posted by motive8
I always find that my Germaniums grow best in a light topsoil and compost mix. Of course, the best compost is made from a combination of shredded monochrome CRT's mixed with all the RAM i have that no longer works in the machines i keep upgrading to.
Companion planting old 520c laptops are recommended. The flies are attracted to them instead of the Germaniums.

Haha, LOL, but oh dear!
That's definitely worth the groan of the week. Or should that be grown of the week

 

[Rocketman]

Re: Come on, people...

Originally posted by Yamson
Don't expect to see this in a Mac or any computer any time soon. This is a COMMUNICATIONS chip designed for use in high-speed network routers. The circuitry is much different than that of a desktop computer CPU. . . .

What I find possible say a year after they introduce this chip to the Cisco market, is a coprocessor. The whole purpose of this type of chip is wide bandwidth and alot of little transactions.

A CISC or even a RISC chip is more monotonic.

However as a CPU upgrade it would replace several MP systems in software and hardware and make an outstanding server CPU.

Mac G6 server 4U 4 processor = 44 G5's

Now one valid point was what one even do with that much computer capacity?

Image storage and serving including complete movies, interactive backgrounds, and systems monitoring services, navigation and remote, wireless networking. Wideband.

We're not all that far away from reality.

Rocketman

 

[stoid]

110GHz

Yeah, windows can now crash in .00032 seconds!!! Mabye its .000319999, I'm not sure

 

[littlejim]

Re: 110GHz

Originally posted by stoid
Yeah, windows can now crash in .00032 seconds!!! Mabye its .000319999, I'm not sure

Like it ... like it ...!!!