IBM produces smaller Cells
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Destined for servers not PS3, at least not at the start... IBM has beguin punching out a 65nm version of the Cell processor used in Sony's PlayStation 3. Gamers should not get too excited: Big Blue's Broadband Engine - to give Cell its full name - is aimed not at consoles but slimline servers.â¦
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A Scottish engineer has figured out how to tame microscopic wires, making it easier to build smaller microprocessors, which will eventually lead to smaller supercomputers.
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Company alters traditional chip configuration to pack more memory into an even smaller unit.
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Company looks to juice its application server business with a version tuned for smaller organizations.
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IBM researchers today said they have successfully demonstrated a new technique for improving transistor performance that will help the company build smaller, more powerful chips in the next decade.
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The chipmaker appears to have met its most recent deadline for production of the smaller-featured chips.
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IBM today announced that it is making its first computing system based on the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) generally available on a global basis, with early adopters such as University of Manchester, RapidMind, Inc.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM has demonstrated how to perform certain computer functions on single atoms and molecules, a discovery that could someday lead to processors the size of a speck of dust, the company said Thursday. Researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California developed a technique for measuring magnetic anisotropy, a property of the magnetic field that gives it the ability to maintain a particular direction. Being able to measure magnetic anisotropy at the atomic level is a crucial step toward the magnet representing the ones or the zeroes used to store data in binary computer language. In a second report, researchers at IBM's lab in Zurich, Switzerland, said they had used an individual molecule as an electric switch that could potentially replace the transistors used in modern chips. The company published both research reports in Friday's edition of the journal Science. The new technologies are at least 10 years from being used for components in commercial products, but the discoveries will allow scientists to take a large step forward in their quest to replace silicon, said IBM spokesman Matthew McMahon. To build faster, smaller chips, IBM and other chip vendors like Intel and AMD have shrunk the dimensions of chip features from 90 nanometers to 65nm in the current generation of chips and plan to continue to 45nm and 32nm in coming years. The problem is that wires built from silicon tend to leak more electricity at each step on that scale and will eventually reach a limit where they are no longer useful. "Across all our areas of nanotechnology research, we're trying to determine the new kinds of materials we can use in computing when silicon reaches its fundamental limits. The ultimate goal is molecular-level computers, but the interim products will probably be hybrids with current technology, using things like carbon nanotubes," McMahon said. IBM defines nanotechnology as work done at a scale of 100nm or smaller. At that scale, scientists must use a tool called the STM (scanning tunneling microscope) to photograph and manipulate individual atoms as they did in their latest research. Their next challenge is to find a way to make these laboratory demonstrations work at room temperature, he said. Having measured the magnetic anisotropy of a single atom, "their next step is finding atoms that can do it at stable temperatures that are suitable for storage devices. If they can find that, it's still a decade out from commercialization," he said. The Zurich researchers also developed a technique for using a molecule containing two hydrogen atoms as a switch, either on its own or with an adjacent molecule. They are now looking to apply the method to many other molecules, enabling the system to work as a collection of logic gates, the building blocks of microprocessors. Even if the teams reach those goals, they must find a way to manufacture the systems on a large scale, instead of moving single atoms with the STM. One possibility is to use the process of self-assembly, where atoms under certain conditions will naturally form the desired shapes. In May, IBM said it had used that approach to insulate the wires on a chip by creating trillions of tiny, vacuum-filled holes around each one.
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IBM is tweaking its semiconductor technology to help extend the performance of its servers and enterprise PCs, the company said Monday.
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Nanowires put more power in smaller packages, researcher reports.
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IBM and Sony powered-on the much hyped &quot;Cell&quot;-processor and used the opportunity to provide a few details about the chip.
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Tiny computer chips used for tracking food, tickets and other items are getting even smaller.
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InfoWorld - IBM Corp. has taken a large stride in its race with Intel Corp. to make faster, smaller chips by building silicon transistors from a rare combination of metals.
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IBM and Advanced Micro Devices have come up with a new way of straining silicon in a move that will allow them to make chips with better performance.
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By JORDAN ROBERTSON  SAN JOSE, Calif. - IBM has devised a way to triple the amount of memory stored on computer chips and double the performance of data-hungry processors by replacing a problematic type of memory with a variety that uses much less space on the slice of silicon.
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SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA - The days of relying on shrinking transistors to achieve performance gains are over, and the chip industry needs to enter a new era of innovation where system-level features are just as important as thinner transistor gates, said IBM Corp.'s Bernie Meyerson in a keynote address at the Fall Processor Forum Tuesday.
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Company's S3000PT is half the size of a regular server motherboard, letting two fit inside a small rack-mounted machine.