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AnchorDesk

Patrick Houston
20GHz or bust! How Intel plans to break more speed records

Patrick Houston
Editorial Director, AnchorDesk
Tuesday, October 9, 2001
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The speed freaks at Intel refuse to let anything get in the way of their obsession. They keep finding ways to thwart physics; just when we think they can't possibly find a way to stuff more transistors onto a square of silicon, they find a way to do it.

Nor will they be deterred by market reality--the fact that more and more of us are finding it harder and harder to find real uses for faster chips.

Now comes this news: As ZDNN's Michael Kanellos reports, the engineers and scientists at Intel have found yet another way to frustrate the forces of design limitation, and their breakthrough could clear the way for chips to zip along at speeds of 20GHz or more by 2006.

THIS TIME it has nothing to do with what's in the chip--or what's on it. Instead, it has everything to do with what's around it.

Here's the non-engineering explanation of what Intel is developing:

Every chip communicates with its motherboard through dozens of tiny connections, or pins, that surround it. In microprocessor parlance, this array of connections is called the chip's "packaging."

AS IT TURNS OUT, the packaging stands as one of the foremost bottlenecks in the quest for ever-more powerful microprocessors. For chips to hit 20GHz, they'll need to communicate with the motherboard and all its circuits in increasingly complex ways, sending and receiving more and more signals.

To accommodate that need, Intel has come up with something called Build-Up Layer (BBUL) packaging. Right now, a chip sit atop its package. With BBUL, the chip will be etched into the package, using the very same lithographic techniques used to create the chip's circuits.

Result: Every chip will be surrounded by a far more complex set of connections for communicating with the motherboard and, thus, allowing it to set speed records.

LIKE MOST OF YOU, I'm utterly fascinated by Intel's continued efforts to keep up--or even outdo--Moore's Law, which holds that the number of transistors per integrated circuit doubles every 18 months. But as chipmakers, like Intel, continue to outpace Gordon Moore's now-infamous prediction, they're also outpacing the market.

Computer technology is advancing at a rate that exceeds our ability to fruitfully use it. And I'm convinced this effect is at least partly responsible for the current slowdown in PC sales and technology markets. Indication: Gartner, the big IT research and consulting group, is now suggesting that companies replace their PCs every four to five years, instead of the three-year cycle it's traditionally recommended.

Still, you have to hand it to the engineers and researchers. Their achievements are to be lauded. They'll be rewarded one day, too--not just one day soon.

Go to the full story by Michael Kanellos.

* * *

The story:
How PC makers are trying to mimick... McDonald's?
You know how it works. You walk into McDonalds, or Burger King, or Wendy's, or Carl Jr.'s, and you can get a pre-configured meal that costs less than the burger, fries, and soft drinks would separately. (Can you tell I have young kids?) Now PC makers are creating their own version of the "meal deal." They're bundling hardware with value-added services in an effort to offer better--and more enticing--packages to their customers. Example: On Monday, Dell announced it'll provide all the hardware, software, and services for a Windows 2000 server cluster under its Infrastructure Accelerators program, for a mere $40,000, of course. Go to the full story by Michael Kanellos and John G. Spooner.

* * *

The story:
Excite@Home: Don't buy this portal
Imagine trying to buy a used car and having the owner wrinkle up her nose, while telling you, "Eh, it isn't such a good deal." That is, in effect, the concession Excite@Home made about its portal and media network when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings two weeks ago. It declared in the documents that it had started to "wind down" those assets, indicating that not even it thinks they're worth much. They're not. The market already has a dominating one, two, three, and four--AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and Netscape. There's no room--no need, really--for a fifth. Ironic, isn't it? Remember when portals were all the rage? Excite@Home's fate underscores, yet again, how supposedly smart people--and money--can be so stupid. Go to the full story by Jim Hu.

* * *

MORE NEWS WORTH NOTING:

Do you see much potential for a 20GHz chip that could be made possible by Intel's new packaging techniques? TalkBack to me!

Patrick Houston is the editorial director at AnchorDesk and is also the former executive producer for ZDNet News. He can be reached at patrick.houston@anchordesk.com.

For more tech news and up-to-the-minute headlines, go to ZDNet News.

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