As someone actually involved with this work, let me clarify a few misconceptions. This result is for a discrete transistor, not a processor or even a simple circuit. Further, the 500GHz refers to a figure of merit known as fT ("f sub T"), not to a clock speed. Such a high figure of merit might make the device suitable for use in high-speed logic gates operating at a couple of hundred GHz (although a complete processor would be slower). Such a processor wouldn't be that dense, however, since power dissipation with bipolar transistors is high compared with CMOS. More commonly, these devices would be used either in RF applications (which is the source of mentioning 2GHz cell phones ... the reference was to carrier frequency, not digital processor speed) or in high-speed serial links including transceivers for fiber-optic links.
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David @ Jun 20th 2006 11:24AM
As someone actually involved with this work, let me clarify a few misconceptions. This result is for a discrete transistor, not a processor or even a simple circuit. Further, the 500GHz refers to a figure of merit known as fT ("f sub T"), not to a clock speed. Such a high figure of merit might make the device suitable for use in high-speed logic gates operating at a couple of hundred GHz (although a complete processor would be slower). Such a processor wouldn't be that dense, however, since power dissipation with bipolar transistors is high compared with CMOS. More commonly, these devices would be used either in RF applications (which is the source of mentioning 2GHz cell phones ... the reference was to carrier frequency, not digital processor speed) or in high-speed serial links including transceivers for fiber-optic links.