[MLUG - DISCUSSION] The Increase in Chip Speed Is Accelerating, Not Slowing

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

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

N.Y. Times
February 4, 2002

The Increase in Chip Speed Is Accelerating, Not Slowing

By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 3 -- In the world of computer chips, Moore's Law is
becoming less of an axiom and more of a drag race.

At the world's premier chip design conference, which begins here today,
the spotlight will be on blinding computer speed. That emphasis suggests
that the trajectory of desktop PC performance increases of the last two
years will not slow in the near future, but actually accelerate.

Intel, 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.

[snip]

The topic with perhaps the greatest near-term commercial relevance will be
Intel's technical description of its new McKinley microprocessor, the next
generation of its Itanium family of processor chips. In a partnership with
Hewlett-Packard, Intel has invested heavily in the development of the
McKinley -- a chip that processes data in 64-bit chunks and is meant to
compete with 64-bit products including I.B.M.'s PowerPC, Sun Microsystems'
SPARC and Compaq Computer's Alpha. The McKinley is expected on the market
by midyear.

Although speed is important in processor design, for large corporate
server, engineering and scientific applications it is vital that the
processor can directly process vast arrays of data. Many computing
problems have now reached beyond the limits of today's desktop
microprocessors that process data 32 bits at a time.

Success for the McKinley is crucial to Intel, because the first version of
the Itanium microprocessor received a lackluster reception last year. The
McKinley will include 221 million transistors, making it by far the
largest microprocessor ever designed. Most of the transistors will be
dedicated to fast "cache" memory intended to speed operations.

Today most microprocessors keep most cache on a separate chip, and
software programs pay a performance penalty in moving information between
processor and memory.


Copyright 2002  The New York Times Company

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