New Chip Could Offer Huge Power, Low Heat

A new chip design developed by scientists at the University of Rochester could eventually lead to 3,000-GHz processors that produce very little heat, according to an item in Information Week. Quentin Diduck, the graduate student at the university who came up with the idea, describes the design as the next step on the evolutionary track after relays, tubes, and semiconductors.

The technology could address many of the power and cooling issues seen in today's data centers, but has a long way to go before it shows up in PCs and servers. "Up to now, this has been a one-graduate-student effort," says Marc Feldman, a professor of computer engineering at Rochester. "We don't have any transistor behavior yet, but probably soon." In the meantime, the National Science Foundation is providing the University of Rochester with $1.1 million to develop a prototype. Read more.