Robert - Re: "...is IBM a serious threat to INTEL? Have they announced some super fast processor that is due in the spring?"
No - they will discuss a small, 1 million transistor, integer only CPU test vehicle made on a 0.15 micron process that is two process generations ahead of currrent production processes, made under "laboratory" conditions.
Also, copper is a lower resistivity metal compared to aluminum. Intel has compenstaed for this by using comparatively thick, high aspect ratio Aluminum alloy interconnects which are much, much more easily manufactured - and they achieve the desired reduced RC time constant delays.
Paul
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Chair: T. Williams, AMD/Nexgen, Milpitas, CA
Associate Chair: V. Oklobdzjia, Integration, Berkeley, CA
15.1 - A 1.0GHz Single-Issue 64b PowerPC Integer Processor - 1:30 PM
J. Silberman, N. Aoki, D. Boerstler, J. Burns, S. Dhong, A. Essbaum, U. Ghoshal, D. Heidel, P. Hofstee, K. Lee,
D. Meltzer, H. Ngo, K. Nowka, S. Posluszny, O. Takahashi, I. Vo, B. Zoric IBM Austin Research Lab., Austin, TX
A 1M-transistor 64b single-issue processor operates to 1.1GHz from 1.8V at 25oC. The 4-stage pipeline design in 0.15um Leff 6-layer-metal CMOS, implements 96 fixed-point ALU and load/store instructions from the PowerPC set, and uses full-custom dynamic circuits and supports full at-speed scan with a divide-by-16 tester interface. |
