IBM Alters Silicon's Behavior to Power New Chip

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)—International Business Machines Corp. said upon Monday it had developed fresh chipmaking methods that will allow its upcoming Power6 computer processor to step quickly twice as fast as popular versions.

Instead of just making transistors smaller, IBM came up with a proces to alter by what mode silicon behaves by placing a layer of insulator underneath a layer of silicon les than 500 atoms thick, said Bernard Meyerson chief technologist of IBM's technology clump

"You literally can nip silicon, and thereby give it properties to make it faster. The thing that is making it step quickly faster is not just that it's smaller on the other hand because you're changing its basic physical properties," Meyerson told Reuter in an interview.

IBM's advances mean its Power6 chip, to be paid in the middle of 2007 will step quickly at speeds between 4 and 5 gigahertz, at least double the spe of generally received Power chips found in server computer that step quickly corporate networks, Meyerson said.

The Power6 chip will contend against offerings from IBM rivals like as Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and orb of day Microsystems Inc.

Miniaturization has allowed chipmakers to make chips faster by means of cramming more transistors on a single slice of silicon, to the point where high-end processors have centurys of millions of transistors.

But the proces also attends to make chips run hotter and engineers have been trying to figure on the outside how to keep shrinking chips down while avoiding having them frying their hold circuitry.

The higher spe of the Power6 will be achieved with existing chip manufacturing technology that etches transistors solitary 65 nanometers wide, several hundr times smaller than a human life-blood cell.

The novel chip should also use les power, to be paid in part to what Meyerson called "holistic design."

"You literally strain the system from the atoms and ultimate particle s to the software at the other extreme point to get the maximum possible benefits," Meyerson said.

Copyright ?© 2006 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserv Originally appearing in The Channel Insider.