Jan. 28, 2007 - 19:07 MST

NEED FOR SPEED

Always good news when science and research move us forward in a good way. An article in Sunday's The Denver Post by Therese Poleti of The San Jose (Calif) Mercury News gives just that, I think. In full, it is quoted here:

INTEL, IBM REVEAL BREAKTHROUGHS IN COMPUTER CHIPS

"Intel and IBM separatelly anounced competing developments Friday discribed as one of the biggest advances in semiconductor chip design in about 40 years."

"Using new materials and a new manufacturing process, changes not seen in 40 years, the two companies announced breakthroughs that would increase the speed and power of chips for another decade."

"Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel is apparently much further along than IBM, saying it it will launch new chips for computers, laptops and servers before the end of the year based on the advances."

"One of the most important features is that the faster chips will consume much less power, a growing problem for some companies in the industry."

"It's a real breakthrough . . . . for both of them," said Rick Doherty, research director of The Envisioneering Group in Seaford. N.Y. "I wouldn't be surprised if members of these teams were up for the Nobel prize."

"The news from both tech giants is proof that after almost seven years of industry research, transistors can be built using so-called high-k metal gates. Transistors are the simple on-off switches that process the ones and zeroes of electrical data on a chip."

"Intel said that the development will ensure that Moore's Law will thrive well into the next decade. Moore's Law is the name given to a prediction by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who said in the 1960s that the number of transistors on a chip would double every two years."

"That prediction has proved to be an industry benchmark that has paved the way for faster, cheaper and more reliable computers, cellphones and other consumer electronics."

"The retired Moore, 78, said in a statement Friday that Intel's use of high-k and metal materials "marks the biggest change in transistor technology since 1969."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It might not excite many folks who have been born in later years, but I remember when a person would go to an electronics store and buy ONE transistor with its three little leads and cobble something up from that. That does excite me.

And the state of the art manufacturing has made a desk top have more capabilities than the older computers which needed huge buildings and huge amounts of electricity to operate. This new development will give more speed with less consumption of electricity. Perhaps we will soon have home edition "super computers."

Hope I will be around a few more years and can manage to corral my nickles and dimes and maybe buy one of those for myself. Now if I can just get a cyborg pair of hands and fingers and brain power booster then one a them things will be fun to have.

I am hoping that science will develop electronic means to govern the speed of modern day speech. Heck they talk faster than I can understand, and along with that they slur their speech something terrible. Even so, though, in commercial computing there is a huge NEED FOR SPEED . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Blog