It's a small world, after all -- and it's only getting smaller.
International Business Machines
It's just a proof of concept at this point, but will translate to full-scale processor production by 2011, according to Big Blue and its research partners at Advanced Micro Devices
These advances are important, because they drive the seemingly neverending progress of faster and more capable processors, lower power draws, and cheaper manufacturing. For now, we're stuck with a mixture of 45nm and 65nm microchips powering everything from Dell's
We've come a long way from the 800nm chip traces of the 486 era, and we're getting close to the theoretical limits of smallness. My physicist friends tell me they'd be between 5nm and 10nm, thanks to quantum effects, X-ray laser wavelength issues, the size of a silicon atom, and other really cool limitations. That's "cool" in a pocket-protector kind of way, of course, and the semi dudes are already doing an end-run around some of the problems by focusing on multicore processors, rather than just cramming more functionality and performance into each core.
It's way too early to call the race to 22nm today, even with working silicon in the IBM consortium's labs. But keep an eye on this space over the next couple of years, and we'll figure out the next-generation winners together.
Further Foolishness: