Intel identifies silicon dioxide successor for chips, due in 2007

[Wraith]

--"Except that they need to speed up release. 2007?"

That is the big problem. Intel's already hitting the limits of watt/sq mm that can be handled with air-cooling. They're going to have to do something interim to be able to make it to the 45 node without resorting to Peltiers or watercooling.

Or drop the P4 line and try to ramp up the PMs...

Wraith
Chaotic Amorals have more fun

[Urban Ranger]

che,

They way they make artificial diamonds now is not the way wafers are made. Futhermore, making small diamonds is one thing, making large 12" wafers is quite another. Even 6 inchers are tough.


The Viceroy,

AFAIK, the advantage of using silicon is it can naturally form an insulator layer. Otherwise, its electric characteristics aren't all that great. If they are going to go the great length of depositing an external insulator layer, there really is no point of using silicon. Much better off using a far better material. That way, they can have much faster switching speed at the current 90nm process.


Wraith,

The thing I don't understand is, who needs a PC that fast?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The thing I don't understand is, who needs a PC that fast?

Off the top of my head...

• Gamers
  
• Desktop publishers
  
• Graphic artists
  
• Photographers
  
• Musicians/sound mixers
  
• People who go for multimedia desktops (real-time MPEG 4 encoding, etc)
  
• Scientists
  
• People building clusters
  
• 3D animators
  
• People who use CAD
  
• Software Developers
  

Not everybody needs the power of modern high-end computers, but a lot of people need that power and then some.

I'm totally oblivious to any point you were trying to make, though I doubt you thought enough about it to try to make a point.

[Skanky Burns]

Who doesn't want their PC to be as fast as possible?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher

• Gamers
  
• Desktop publishers
  
• Graphic artists
  
• Photographers
  
• Musicians/sound mixers
  
• People who go for multimedia desktops (real-time MPEG 4 encoding, etc)
  
• Scientists
  
• People building clusters
  
• 3D animators
  
• People who use CAD
  
• Software Developers
  

Gamers? No, most games are not computationally expensive. Graphic artists? No. Photographers, no. Musicians, doubly no. MPEG4 encoding, possibly, but you are much better of using a DSP. Scientists use supercomputers. The whole point of building PC clusters is each node does not have to be expensive. 3D animators, maybe. CAD is not computationally expensive, either. And what the heck do developers need fast computers? They much take coffee breaks!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Who doesn't want their PC to be as fast as possible?

About 90% of people who use computers.

[Kuciwalker]

Gamers? No, most games are not computationally expensive.

They would be, if they could be.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Gamers? No, most games are not computationally expensive. Graphic artists? No. Photographers, no. Musicians, doubly no. MPEG4 encoding, possibly, but you are much better of using a DSP. Scientists use supercomputers. The whole point of building PC clusters is each node does not have to be expensive. 3D animators, maybe. CAD is not computationally expensive, either. And what the heck do developers need fast computers? They much take coffee breaks!

What world do you live in?

You're out of your mind...

I would make another judgement of your intellect right here but this last post of yours does it for me.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
About 90% of people who use computers.

My, what astounding reason.

So you would assert that 90% of people don't buy into the MHz myth? You would assert that 90% of people wouldn't care if they got a 1GHz vs 3GHz computer?



/me waves to UR out in left field.

[Q Classic]

if people didn't give a damn about mhz/ghz... we wouldn't have 3ghz chips today.

[Az]

precisely, q^3.

As a chemist, I am very much interested in what exactly are they using.

[Wraith]

--"They way they make artificial diamonds now is not the way wafers are made. "

It's a different material, why would the process be the same? They do seem to be quite close to making usable diamond wafers. The question is how long it will take to get that to full production in a factory.

--"The thing I don't understand is, who needs a PC that fast?"

Come, now, UR. You know that, no matter how fast the computer, Windows will always bloat sufficently to bog it down

--"CAD is not computationally expensive, either."

I can see you've never worked on a major CAD-based design. You might be surprised at what kind of requirements graphic artists can have, too (especially for more memory).

In any case, it's just like it's been for a while. Basic tasks won't need cutting-edge hardware. But the more power available, the more things people are going to try to do with it.

Wraith
Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up! Push down! Byte! Byte! Byte!

[Tiberius]

I work in IT support and believe it or not, 90% (or maybe 75%) of people don't care for gigahertz. Of course, they care to have a new computer (because it's fancy to have one!), but all in all they care to have a comp fast enough to do its job. I have 486 computers working with MS-DOS !!!, and they do what they are supposing to do just fine.

Those who care about MHz and GHz are gamers, graphic artists, CAD developers, etc. I care for GHz for my home computer, because I like games. For office comps, I couldn't are less about speed. I care about stability however.

Edit: that being said, there will be always need for more computational power. I am dreaming about a StarTrek like holo-room.

[Q Classic]

to a point, you're right. people don't really care about ghz. why? because it's really quite abstract to them. memory means both HD space and RAM to the average non-techie.
gigahertz to them is just a measure of how new and "good" a computer is; they have no real idea what the difference is between an Athlon or a Pentium 4.

the fact is, though, that higher numbers sell. they always have. Joe User might not know which one's a better performer, but he'll probably think an Athlon 2800+ is better than an Pentium 4 2.5GHz chip--and if it's cheaper, he'll buy the 2800+, simply because its "better".

the real effect of this is that it pushes the chip companies to develop faster and faster chips, just to make their product the "best". it has very little to do with real performance.

if it did, you wouldn't've had AMD rebranding the Athlon 1.1GHz as an Athlon 1700+.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
the fact is, though, that higher numbers sell.

Absolutely right. Which doesn't mean that a 3 GHz machine running MS Word, Internet Explorer and a mail client isn't a total waste, in terms of spent money.

There always will be domains with an avid need for more power, but for an average user the current comp speed is already too much (and no, Asher is not an average user )