The line between science fiction and science fact continues to blur as technological advances are making possible what only a generation ago seemed pure fantasy.
Texas Instruments underscored that phenomenon today with the announcement of the capability to build a thumbnail-sized computer chip with the processing power of 20 of today's personal computers.
In technical jargon, TI announced its new TImeline Technology for building semiconductors with transistors as small as 0.18 micron and containing as many as 125 million transistors on a single chip. A transistor is the basic computing element in semiconductor devices. Transistors as small as 0.18 micron are 600 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. The new technology will allow TI to put memory, microprocessors and other special functions onto a single chip, reducing the number of chips required for consumer electronics by as much as 90 percent.
Today, most electronic systems are made from many semiconductor microchips wired together on printed circuit boards. When information passes from one microchip to another, it is slower and creates heat and noise -- the type of noise one hears on an AM radio in a car. But 125 million transistors on a single chip means fewer chips, making the system faster and quieter while reducing the need for power. Mixing and arranging these cores on one chip will provide greater customer system flexibility while bringing these systems to market faster.
For the consumer, it means cellular phones or laptop computers, for example, will see a significant increase in battery life because the new chips require less power than today's technology, plus they will be lighter and more powerful.
There are tasks, such as image recognition, which require great amounts of computing power. Normally, these systems are found only in expensive robotics systems used in manufacturing. However, with 125 million transistors on a TI chip, picturephones, the proverbial Dick Tracy® wrist computer, or computers that recognize speech and make intelligent decisions in the context of the speech, could be within the consumer's price range. Or, imagine an automated teller machine that can recognize the user's face or do fingerprint recognition, virtually eliminating the possibility of theft.
"Today's most complex chips range from five-to-seven million transistors. This dramatic increase in transistor count will create systems and applications that we haven't even started to imagine," said Rich Templeton, TI Semiconductor Group senior vice president and worldwide manager of its application specific products business. "I think it will revolutionize the electronics industry."
TI expects to begin production of the new chips in 1997.
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