IBM says it builds fastest silicon transistor

EAST FISHKILL: International Business Machines Corp. on Monday said it had built a transistor, or an electronic switch, that can run at speeds of 350 billion cycles per second -- three times as fast as current technology. The transistor could lead to building extremely fast microchips, speeding up data transfers in wireless networks, IBM said.

Combining tens of thousands of transistors creates microchips, which are used in everything from cell phones to toasters to computers. This transistor is designed with communications applications in mind, IBM said. The IBM transistor is built with silicon-germanium, which is made of two materials: silicon, the most widely used semiconductor, and germanium, which is similar to silicon. When silicon and germanium are combined in layers, the transistor can switch faster.

Transistors based on silicon germanium, also called SiGe, can be combined with silicon-based transistors to create high-frequency circuits that are used in mobile phones, optical switches and other communications applications. IBM said it believes that by using the transistor, it can make a communications chip that runs at 150 gigahertz, or 150 billions of cycles per second, within two years. It said that such a chip would require less power and be low cost. That compares with current top communication chip speeds of about 50 gigahertz, an IBM spokesman said.

Use of a chip based on this transistor has more to do with the communications industry adopting faster technology than the development of the chip itself, an IBM executive said. "For example 10 gigabit ethernet going to 40 gigabit -- that adoption is slow," said Bijan Davari, a fellow and vice president of technology and emerging products in IBM's microelectronics group. Gigabit ethernet is a technology used in communications networks.

"When you want to go from 40 to 80 to 150, you can use this technology. We will be ready in a couple of years. The question is, is the industry there," Davari said. IBM will present details of the technology in a paper at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco to be held from December 9 to 11, he said.

(C) Reuters Ltd.