IBM cuts power but boosts output with Silicon

IBM is expecting to ship more than five million processors a month with its new Silicon Germanium (SiGe) technology, which offers improved performance and power efficiency, according to a company representative.

IBM is expecting to ship more than five million processors a month with its new Silicon Germanium (SiGe) technology, which offers improved performance and power efficiency, according to a company representative.

Improvements include new designs that cut power consumption by 50 per cent, allow four-chip solutions to replace eight, and boost some performance measures by a factor of four.

Walt Lang, associate director of wireless products at IBM, said: "This is truly the beginning of this market."

According to IBM engineers, the key to those advances is the integration of the newer, more efficient CMOS manufacturing designs into the complex SiGe systems.

"Silicon Germanium basically allows us to take a CMOS-based process, realise economies of scale and dip into markets that previously have not had those advantages," said Lang.

IBM claimed the architecture improvements provide for higher frequency, higher voltage and greater power efficiency in processing in wireless devices.

Among the highlights of the technology, IBM has designed systems that permit four-chip solutions in wireless LANs to replace eight-chip solutions.

The technology has cut power consumption by half and boosted some performance measures by four.

Overall, the vendor has shipped five million processors with SiGe technology since it rolled out the technology two years ago. The vendor has been developing and refining SiGe for 15 years, according to an IBM white paper.

Fred Zieber, president of market analyst Pathfinder Research, said: "IBM is in the process of moving down to tighter dimensions, and that brings some benefits other than just size. You can work with lower voltage and free up some circuitry. It all adds up to a better, faster, cheaper product."

Zieber said even though IBM is projecting a five-million-chips-a-month shipping rate in the short term, he believed the company had already reached significant volume. He estimated that the manufacturer had been shipping 100 processors a day with SiGe technology, at prices of "five digits" each.

"These are very expensive wafers," he said. "You can do the maths yourself."