Intrinsity Claims 2.2 Ghz Chip

PowerMacDaddy writes "Over at SiliconValley.com there's an article about an Ausin, TX startup named Intrinsity that has unveiled a new chip that utilizes a new logic process with conventional fab processes to acheive a 2.2GHz clock rate. The company is headed by former Texas Instruments and Apple Computer microprocessor developer Paul Nixon. The real question is, is this all FUD, will the real-world performance be part of The Megahertz Myth, or is this thing for real?"

Hmm.....

[forsaken33]

Hoping this comes to desktops next year....or at least the threat comes to the desktops. Its first products will be designed to control high-speed communications equipment. High speed as in what? Telecom/cable quality? Or professional networking material? (just had to put that there....most people dont read the article. Im usually one of them lol)

IF this does come to desktops.....that is good. More competition = lower prices. But, lots of issues that are still unclear. What kind of packaging will this be in? Will it require a proprietary motherboard? If it does.....well......im sensing that this wont last too long. Intrinsity's test chip achieved faster performance using conventional methods, where other chip makers have generated chips running at 400 to 500 megahertz, or about one-fourth as fast as the Intrinsity chip So whats this supposed to mean? Maybe they should make that clear. Is that saying that any chip over 400 or 500 Mhz uses special manufacturing techniques. Now that would be the majority of chips......so how can that be special then?

Also.....Much of Intrinsity's work has involved making improvements to a fundamental building block for processor chips: the logic circuit. Intrinsity relies heavily on a faster but trickier type of circuit, called dynamic logic, than do conventional processors. Dynamic logic circuits can handle more complex functions with fewer steps than static logic circuits So does this mean specialized applications/OSes? Not worrying about linux....know it will be ported. But if this needs a special OS, and special new (read expensive) applications......think it will go under.

Proves the technology is there, though, which is a good thing

Weird article...

[ergo98]

In a nutshell this is saying "Someone said something, but it might be bogus, and the cycle speed really doesn't mean much anyways.". Alrighty then. This is like a "nothing to see here, move along!" type articles.

Mhrz = speed ;-)

[jessemckinney]

I would really like one of the 300Mhrz crays out there, but intel makes a faster processor. Right? ;-)

yay..but cpu means poop

[Anonymous Coward]

now that the cpu isn't the bottleneck anymore lets work on memory and other buss bottlenecks..

Re:MHz

[geekoid]

Actuall the article has little to do with clock rate comparison the way you're thinking of it, it has more to do with manufacturing, and core improvements which could possible raise the MHz across the board. I'll wager they'll try manufacturing chips, but when that fails 1 of 3 things will happen:
1)they liscese the tech, which is what they should do from the begining.
2)AMD or Intel will buy them
3)AMD and Intel (independently) will gear up there marketing drones, and this chip will fade from memory.
what we need is a testing algrythem that all processors use. then we can rate chips as "it completed the Moffitt algorithem in 1.5 minutes!".

Re:A word on "The Megahertz Myth"

[zhensel]

Good point that slashdot should have pointed to, say, the ArsTechnica article on the advantages of the PPC architecture instead of the Apple propaganda. Despite that, no one can doubt that there is a "Megahertz Myth" to a great extent, though perhaps not the the extent Apple suggests. Look at the AMD vs. Intel race right now - people assume that the fastest p3/4 is faster than the fastest Athlon without actually looking at performance results.

note to the editor

[Gen-GNU]

The real question is, is this all FUD...

Well, I really doubt this will be fud, since that stands for fear, uncertanty, and doubt. This acticle seems to be more of a hype piece.

FUD is tearing down a competitor's product with vague statements and generalizations. FUD is not describing your own new product in glowing terms. That's just marketing BS.

I know, I know...shouldn't nitpick. But when the term FUD is so depricated on the main page at slashdot, I really must object.

Re:A word on "The Megahertz Myth"

[4444444]

The MHz myth is true as you admit.It seems you just seem to have a problem with APPLE pointing it out.

2.2Ghz is a BIG DEAL - if it's embedded...

[HiredMan]

This chip is aimed at the embedded markets. In those markets 500Mhz is currently very fast. If they really can produce even 1Ghz chips in the <5W or <10W embedded market they'll clean up.

Even if they stick to their 2003 delivery date 2Ghz+ will still be fast in that market. They would be the leader in both speed and speed/Watt... but I bet they wouldn't be the cheapest... ;)

Using either MIPS or PPC code is smart for the embedded market... just look at AMDs announcment earlier about discontinuing the 486 and other embedded market chips.

Also - if this is normal .18 aluminum technology the potential for someone wielding .15 copper, stretched silicon, SOI - all of which decrease heat/power is pretty amazing...

=tkk

The Process Is The Real News

[Syris]

The real news here is that the 2.2GHz speed was achieved using a relatively common silicon process (0.18micron, aluminum interconnects). Intel,AMD,and others are achieving higher speeds (~2GHz), but with much more developed processes (.12micron, copper).

Intrinsic claims to have developed a new way to design and fabricate high speed logic using some older ideas and this could be a significant achievement.

Does this mean that Intel, etc will be able instantly make 4GHz chips? Nope. And as we all know, the speed of the chip isn't a great measure of it's performance.

By the way, that siliconvalley.com article was pretty weak. Did they try to omit as many details as possible?

"Megahertz Myth" a myth?

[dokhebi]

I took a look at the web site referenced in this article and saw Steve Jobs talking about how the 800 Mhz G4 was faster than the 1.7Ghz Pentium 4. My question is this: what OS was running on the Pentium for? Was it Windows (known to be a resource hog) or a Unix/Linux OS? My guess is that running a better OS would give faster results to the Pentium.

Here is a challenge for Mr. Jobs: run the same Linux distro (ie, Red Hat for Intel and Red Hat for G4) on each machine and then do the bench marks. And while he's at it, try this new micro-processor for speed...