IP: The Increase in Chip Speed Is Accelerating, Not Slowing by our John Markoff

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/04/technology/04CHIP.html

Auto-abstract

At the world's premier chip design conference, which begins here today, the 
spotlight will be on blinding computer speed.

Intel (news/quote), the world's dominant manufacturer of microprocessors, 
will present a paper detailing a portion of a microprocessor chip that has 
performed at up to 10 gigahertz at room temperature --- the fastest 
calculating speed yet reported for a microprocessor, the chip that controls 
the math, logic and data-transfer functions of a computer.

Moore's Law is the observation made in 1965 by the Intel co-founder Gordon 
Moore that the number of transistors on a chip --- and so, approximately, 
the chip's computing power --- would continue to double roughly every 18 
months.

But while Moore's Law proved to be a remarkably accurate engineering 
forecast for three and a half decades, it is now apparent that chip speeds 
are doubling even more frequently than every 18 months.

The Intel announcement, at this year's International Solid State Circuits 
Conference, is the clearest example yet of a shift in technology emphasis 
in the semiconductor industry --- away from the storage capacity of memory 
chips and toward pure speed in microprocessors, which are more complex but 
also much more profitable than memory chips.

Last November, however, the industry's annual technical forecast of 
progress in basic chip-making technologies --- known as the international 
technology road map for semiconductors --- revealed that the industry is 
able to shrink one crucial dimension of modern microprocessors far faster 
than other dimensions.

The shrinking size of the physical gate was one of the key developments 
that aided Intel engineers in Beaverton, Ore., in creating their 10- 
gigahertz processor module.

Over all, the fastest Pentium 4 now reaches a clock speed of 2.2 gigahertz, 
while internal portions of that chip achieve 4.4 gigahertz --- portions 
corresponding to the experimental module that Intel engineers say has 
reached a speed of 10 gigahertz.

Intel also detailed several other design breakthroughs its engineers have 
used to push processor speed --- including a technique called adaptive body 
bias that involves applying a tiny current to each transistor to permit 
higher switching speeds at lower power levels.

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