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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: milo_morai who wrote (137119)	6/11/2001 1:07:03 AM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: "IBM is way ahead of Intel " Funny - IBM buys one heckuva lot of Intel CPUs and chip sets and Flash Memory !

To: milo_morai who wrote (137119)	6/11/2001 3:33:56 AM
From: tcmay	Respond to of 186894

Crack pipe dreams about future technologies Message #137119 from milo_morai at Jun 10, 2001 10:49 PM "Looks like Intel's trying to catch up to IBM "IBM is way ahead of Intel ibm.com. "Quantum Mirage" May Enable Atom-scale Circuits; IBM Scientists Discover Nanotech Communication Method "SAN JOSE, Calif., February 2, 2000 -- IBM scientists have discovered a way to transport information on the atomic scale that uses the wave nature of electrons instead of conventional wiring. The new phenomenon, called the "quantum mirage" effect, may enable data transfer within future nanoscale electronic circuits too small to use wires." This has no more meaning for actual products than Intel's version of the hype does (Intel's "3-atom-wide" transistor, reported and talked about here). These quantum effect devices (true quantum weirdness effects, not the more mundane quantum menchanics of all solid state devices) have been reported on for years and years. They are either decades off in the future, or will never be realizable. (For example, due to decoherence effects swamping out the desired effects.) Anyway, we've been hearing about these technologies "that could replace silicon!" for decades. Bubbles, holographic memory, biotransistors, Josephson Junctions, GaAs, laser pantography, etc. and so on. While something will eventually take over as silicon and lithography reach their limits, this takeover is unlikely to happen quickly. Besides the hype of quantum computing, we have also seen a lot of hype in recent years about nanotechnology, optical computing (using nonlinear materials, not just as MUXes and switches), buckminsterfullerines, and that old war horse, "biochips." Fact is, virtually none of these hyped "could replace silicon!" technogies ever goes anywhere, which is not surprising. The chip industry has tens of thousands of researchers pushing at various limits. A technology which obsoletes earlier approaches is not an easy thing to develop, and having laboratory results, research lab results, is not persuasive. (I worked in a Josephson Junction lab in 1972-3, and it was pretty obvious to me that reports leaking out of IBM that it was going to use JJs for its future computers were crack pipe dreams. Sure enough, 25 years later and there are still no JJ computers.) If quantum computation (closely related to quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, the Shor algorithm, Deutsch's work, etc.) ever becomes the new computing paradigm, the various chip makers will have plenty of time to do the needed work. (I follow the quantum computing work fairly closely, because of a longstanding interest in cryptography. Color me highly skeptical that quantum decoherence effects can be solved.) Is IBM ahead of Intel? In some areas, sure. In other areas, obviously not. --Tim May

To: milo_morai who wrote (137119)	6/11/2001 2:12:16 PM
From: fingolfen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Looks like Intel's trying to catch up to IBM Actually, if you look closer, it appears that the world is trying to catch up to Intel: dailynews.yahoo.com cnn.com "In its research labs in Hillsboro, Oregon, Intel engineers have designed and manufactured a handful of transistors that are only 20 nanometers, or 0.02 microns, in size. By comparison, the transistors found in the latest chips in use today measure 0.18 microns from one side of the transistor gate to the other."