"By comparison, 500 GHz is more than 250 times faster than today's cell phones, which typically operate at approximately 2 GHz, according to the organizations."

Bwhahaha! That quote's from the article linked. This tech is meant for analog RF! Props to Hannibal of Ars.

Folks, don't get too excited. This is a "chip" -- meaning more than one transistor -- but not a microprocessor. And it's likely a Bipolar Junction Transistor (not a Field Effect Transistor) which have been using germanium and running way above 10GHz for a long time. 500GHz is the switching speed of a single transistor; just for reference, good old Silicon MOSFETs can be swtiched at 50GHz under the right conditions. Getting tens of millions of them together to form a x86-class CPU, btw, is not the right conditions. You really can't build much of a conventional microprocessor that will function at 500GHz anyway because of propagation delays due to speed of light (unconventional designs -- pure pipelines or clockless or whatever -- are another story but have their own issues).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor#Bipolar_junction_transistor
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Nov/bch20021104017136.htm

My latest gaming rig,

IBM SUPERDUPER 450GHz
60TB RAM
600BILLION TB HARD DRIVE 900,000 RPM
ATI X89095.5XTX PLATINUM X Edition x10 DecaFire
California PowerStation PSU

Runs Half Life 22 at medium settings, here's a screenshot
http://img24.exs.cx/img24/2053/HalfLife3.jpg

So, okay - it's not a very complicated chip and, yes, it only runs at 300GHz at room temperature.....

But OMFG, think how fast it could run pong!!

Fast switching transistor does not useful transistor make. What modern day problems does this solve?
-Mole

<Kitty> That is the chip Intel used to fake the IDF Conroe results..I knew it!

It's nice to see all of the enthusiasm. I get as week-kneed as the next techno-geek at the prospect of current processors with millions of transistors and a laundry list of instruction sets being able to operate at 100 fold their current speed.

But reality eventually beckens.

THESE chips likely only have a few thousand transistors tops, allowing for only very simple instruction sets and non of the on-die cache required to perform sequences of multiple-layered instructions found in current CPUs and GPUs.

the alloy is already used in a number of applications today, including Intel and AMD's 65 nm and 90 nm process technologies leads me to believe that these processors are not as cutting edge as we all wish they might be.

I'm sure if AMD or Intel wanted to, they could design a thousand transistor chip that could hit similar speeds - but couldn't do much. The very applications these things are speculated to be aimed for are, after all, not very complex compared to modern day CPUs.

ultra-high speed chips that could make their way into communications and military systems. Additionally, the research can be applied to produce high-speed, low-power chips for cell phones and other embedded devices

Why not using it for PCs....

and yet still not one 3ghz power pc chip they promised 2+ years ago.

Hey is this going to hit us....IF YES PLEASE SENT ME THE BILL AND THE SYSTEM I WILL BE READY TO PAY $5000 for this without any hasitations.. Dam this chip is freaking fast... Rocket at its limit...

Cue the AMD and INTEL fanboys saying their cpus will still out perform this.

Well for all you folks asking for IBM's 3ghz or 210 ghz, I purpose this... maybe they had bigger fish to fry...I mean heck the chip still hits 350ghz in room temp, so I'd say that surpasses 3 and 210ghz added to together, so I'd say they outdid what they were going to do anyway. Maybe they don't want to produce previously said chips and I'd say that's up to them, it's their company so I for one don't see why it's such a big deal.....my two pence

I think we should all bow our heads in a moment of silence out of respect for the passing of the PPC chips from Macs. I remember a day when a story such as this would have yielded a chorus of Mac users telling us how we'll see 200 GHz PPC chips in macs in two years, which will finally destroy Intel, blah blah blah...

high-speed, low-power chips for cell phones and other embedded devices.

good. now my java-based phone will be a little faster when scrolling through my 30-person contact list.

We are still waiting on their 5 year old 210Ghz chips.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/25/ibm_preps_210ghz_chip_techn...

Unless that is, they have a very special purpose that none of us could care about :P

Okay, what everyone wants to know is...
How fast does it run Quake 3?

OMFG

USA! USA! USA!... /cheerleading

Screw Conroe! :P

Where do I sign up? :P