The Future of Computer Chips in Intel and IBM

Published:2011/12/9 0:29:00 Author:Phyllis From:SeekIC

Speaking of the future of computer chips, Intel has already set the bar for the next generation of processors, which should start to roll out early next year, and IBM has laid out its long view of processing technology, beginning to chart the undiscovered country of what comes after silicon becomes obsolete.

Intel’s Ivy Bridge is the next wave of computer chips that will soon be used in PCs and Macs. The smaller chips get, the greater their processing frequencies. Ivy Bridge means machines with nearly 4GHz of processing power. Intel’s top-of-the-line Core i7 processor will boast 3.9GHz in a quad-core design, so that separate parts of the chip can work independently up to that speed. Although the Ivy Bridge chips use a novel technology known as Tri-Gate, they’re still based on silicon.

While chipmakers are still probing the depths to which they go in terms of keeping the number of those transistors ever-increasing, they will hit that limit soon. Once circuitry is shrunk to around seven nanometers, quantum effects start to take over, and it will be impossible to go any smaller.

IBM just showcased its long-term plan for going beyond silicon and taking processing power to new heights. The company is betting on three technologies: carbon nanotubes, graphene, and racetrack memory.

Carbon nanotubes involve swapping out silicon in favor of carbon. IBM described how the company built a transistor made out of carbon nanotubes in the 10-nanometer range. Besides the attractively small size, it outperformed silicon in several key metrics.

Graphene was discovered in 2004 and it has been hailed as a new kind of wonder substance despite it’s essentially a form of carbon as well, similar to pencil lead. Graphene is the king of small and it’s highly conductive. IBM built the first graphene circuit earlier this year, and now it says it can build graphene chips using production lines usually used for silicon, which bodes well for mass production.

Racetrack memory involves replacing flash memory, used in everything from iPhones to SD cards, with microscopic magnets shifted along tiny wire loops called nanowires. IBM has demonstrated this tech, too, also built with normal product lines.

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