How does this news affect Intel?

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by Math_Wiz, Feb 25, 2007.

  1. Math_Wiz

    Math_Wiz

  2. chip interconnects have been a limiting factor for processors for a while now, so sure the technology could be useful. there's a lot of questions, though:
    -how easy is it to manufacture?
    -whats the yield?
    -what is the cost?
    etc
    if this were a big deal, it'd probably already be bought by one of the big companies. further, the specified use (chips stacked on each other) makes no mention of the horrid cooling problems the scheme runs into (which is exactly why we don't already have stacked wafers) - a more likely use would be for the interconnects to memory, and there are still plenty of problems related to that too.
     
  3. maxpi

    maxpi

    The engineers can tweak the process and run things slower to deal with the heat. The question is how will a 10,000 bit wide bus affect general computing? 64 bit is not catching on really, currently, so apparently a wider bus is not the solution for general computing applications, it may be the solution for some specialized applications.
     
  4. Math_Wiz

    Math_Wiz



    I was thinking the same thing. There's more to computing than just the bus. However, that's still a pretty amazing quantum leap right there.

    +-*/ Math_Wiz
     
  5. the 64 bits in '64-bit computing' have little to do with bus sizes external to processor (other than the width of the address buses) and instead mostly the internal registers of the cpu. internal buses aren't particularly limited since wires can be on the same order size as transistors.

    memory buses (ie what is connected to a chip) are usually 128 or 256 bits these days and not bigger because of the inability to put more pins on the package, with plenty of the other ~500 pins dedicated to power and other input/output.

    this article says that the company is developing a method of having more connections to a chip (having nothing to do with the internal buses in the chip), thus the ability to communicate more information to outside the chip.

    as for 64-bit computing not being used in general, there isn't much push for it. most systems today still don't have 4gb of memory (the big limitation of 32-bit computing) and lots of software still hasn't been recompiled for the new architecture. it'll happen in time, though.