Soon: IBM CPU @ 300 GHz

What's 100 times faster than silicon? Graphene.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34726.wss

Not only is it faster, it's much smaller. One atom thick, or hundreds of times smaller than silicon layers.

Not only is it faster, it can run hotter. 125 degrees Celsius. That's 257 degrees Fahrenheit, or about three times hotter than what your CPU should be running at now. However, this is not the heat given off by the CPU itself - this is the tolerance of the material.

Silicon actually runs hot, to the point that the temperature it operates at is close to the temperature at which it fails, thus: CPU Cooling fans.

IBM has taken fifty plus years since 1911 to get its first 5,000 patents, but now holds the #1 spot as the most patented company in the world with more than 5,000 patents being registered to it EVERY YEAR.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33341.wss

These aren't "MSFT style" software patents for things like "Click, then redirect to webpage" which already existed prior to MSFT. This isn't trivial. IBM is patenting nanotechnology. If I had millions to invest in stocks I'd look at IBM as a sure bet for the future, on a long term hold.

For the record, the fastest CPU out there right now barely clears THREE GHz. It does so by running at more than 140F. This is why PCs are getting faster by running MULTIPLE CORES rather than faster GHz. There's no room for increasing the temperature range because the chip will fry.

PC cases can maintain a low-humidity -100F temperature gradient, or temperature drop, to keep such chips from melting the entire computer. Most do this with self-contained liquid cooling systems. "Hot" gaming PCs are set up that way.

With graphene, we can go back to the days of the 286, when cooling fans were unheard of!

[At least for the CPU, the power supply will still have a fan even for graphene based power supplies unless IBM invents a low-temperature transformer mated to cool FETs.]

^_^