Super-fast Transistors On the Way

nbannerman writes "The BBC is reporting about a new kind of transistor, that recently set a world record of 110Ghz. From the article: 'To achieve the speed gain, researchers at the University of Southampton added fluorine to the silicon devices. The technique uses existing silicon manufacturing technology meaning it should be quick and easy to deploy.' The apparent applications for this process include mobile phones and digital cameras."

Faster?

[Asm-Coder]

Maybe we should just get faster software.

Re:Faster?

[rsilvergun]

It's cheaper to pay a few top engineers to make faster hardware then to pay a mountain of top computer scientists to write stable, fast code. Corel learned that the hardway.

Re:Mobile Phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

So my shiny new video-enabled phone will respond instantaneously to button-presses.

Like my LCD-based phones from 10 years ago used to.

Re:Power Consumption

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame this is for bipolar transistors, not FETs, and the contribution of the effect you're talking about is pretty small anyway. :-\

Re:Faster?

[Carthag]

It's the old "stable, fast, on schedule; pick two" -- the faster the chip is, the more likely you can concentrate on writing stable code on schedule and make up for the slowness with processor speed.

But these are BIPOLAR transistors!

[PaulBu]

Hey, it is "standard" "silicon" process, but they compete with other GaAs/InP/SiGe bipolar transistors, not yoru garden variety CMOS FETs -- and for other technologies Ft of more than 100GHz is not unheard of. Neat trick, and you will see them in your cellphone front-end, maybe soon, but do not hold your breath for 20GHz processors (and if someone makes 'em, please *do not hold them with your bare hands*! -- they gonna be HOT!) ;-)

Paul B.