What IBM's Fastest Chips Are Made Of
A Wall Street Journal article reported that IBM spent $1.5 billion to develop the new technology and a primary driver for such intense research is that the users in the mobile bank and related financial services segment will explode, hitting 894 million in just five years. That's intense growth considering that last year there was 515 million. But the most interesting insight in the WSJ piece was some background on the actual technology itself--what it's made of. As IBM has reported the new system, called zEnterprise 196, houses 96 of the fastest chips available and can process more than 50 billion instructions per second. To put that in perspective, that is 17,000 time faster than the rate of IBM's top system back in 1970. The technology uses pulses of light, not copper wires, to share information between chips and IBM used silicon and a substance called germanium to make the necessary components. According to the WSJ, the system features something called an avalanche photodetector and this converts light into electricity. According to PhysicsWorld.com, avalanche photodetectors are employed in telecommunications networks and pulses of light use much less power. |
