Intel is making news once again. At the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Franciscoit’s debuted a trio of new technologies, including the low-end Silverthorne mobile processor and a method that will double the capacity of phase-change products. But the item that willgrab the headlines has been dubbed Tukwila. It’s a quad core chip that packs a remarkable two billion transistors into a tiny space, according to the BBC. It’s 12 years since Intelintroduced a chip with a billion transistors, making this an evolution. But don’t imagine it’s a revolution, by any means. Its power is actually quite modest, with a processingspeed of just 2Ghz, something you can already find on many PCs (in case you’re wondering, IBM claims the fastest commercial chip at 4.7Ghz). The transistors are used for memory, whichcan be processed faster by its proximity to the chip. But it’s not the greenest product around, with high power consumption. "That’s very much a reflection of the market placedemands," said Justin Ratner, Intel’s CTO. "These chips go into a quite a unique market place."
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