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That Little Grain of Sand

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PCQ Bureau
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Once upon a time, there was this little grain of sand. Being

so tiny, it often got pushed around. One day, it decided to go to the market to

discover its value. Luckily, it was picked up by a creature called Man, and from

then onwards, there was no stopping it. The little grain changed its appearance

to become a beautiful, well-polished disc, and it dressed up with all sorts of

etchings. It started living with other prosperous grains within Integrated

Circuits (IC). They got together in larger, more complex ICs, and even formed

colonies called microprocessors.

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The grains prospered within the microprocessor colonies, and

more and more of them managed to live happily within the same microprocessor.

The microprocessors were placed within devices like PCs, notebooks, handhelds,

cellphones, and Internet appliances, all of which were of immense use to Man.

Today, the little grain of sand has everything it could ask

for–fame, fortune, and a great place to live in.

This in short is the making of a microprocessor, and in

general the evolution of semiconductor-based circuits. This year,

microprocessors have achieved remarkable feats which hold immense promise for

the future.

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The biggest breakthrough in microprocessors this year is that

they achieved and went beyond the 1 GHz clock frequency. On March 6, AMD

announced the release of its 1 GHz Athlon processor, and two days later Intel

did the same for its PIII. One GHz processors were made possible by reducing the

size of the chip and packing more but smaller transistors in the same space. The

initial 1 GHz processors from both companies were based on the slot

architecture. These required extensive cooling facilities, such as large heat

sinks and lots of fans inside a system housing the processors. However, they’re

now available in a socket design–a change in the processor packaging. As the

magazine goes to press, the market for 1 GHz systems is yet to take off in

India. Possibly, the high prices of these systems are responsible.

Speaking of processor packaging, the other achievement in

microprocessors was that both Athlon and PIII moved from the slot-based

architecture to a socket-based one. Intel moved from Slot 1 to Socket 370 in

FCPGA packaging, while AMD moved Athlon from Slot A to Socket A. The new design

reduced the size of the chip considerably, thereby reducing costs and improving

performance. It also improved heat dissipation. Moreover, the same Socket 370

can be used for Intel’s Celeron processor too, while the Socket A can also

accommodate AMD’s Duron.

Another major player in the microprocessor market this year

was MIPS. But you can’t buy MIPS chips directly. The company is into designing

microprocessor cores and licensing them out to other companies. MIPS processors

have been extremely successful, and you’ll find them in devices as varied as

the Sony PlayStation2 (the game console that created waves in the gaming

industry this year), handhelds (both Palm and PocketPC), and Aibo–(Sony’s

highly popular robotic pet dog).

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Transmeta’s Crusoe processor was another significant

breakthrough in processor technology. The processor uses a new design that

allows size reduction and well as more efficient power consumption, which makes

it suitable for use in mobile devices, Internet appliances, etc. The processor

is part software and part hardware. The hardware part understands a new kind of

instruction set called VLIW. The software–also called Code Morphing software–translates

x86 instructions into VLIW. This way, Crusoe remains compatible with most

applications and operating systems on Intel and AMD platforms. Though the

processor was launched in January this year, it hasn’t made any significant

market strides so far. There’s only one known product using the processor–the

Sony VAIO C1 PictureBook notebook computer.

The Cyrix processor made a comeback this year, thanks to VIA.

VIA has been in the news this year, having brought out some very good chipsets,

giving strong competition to Intel. Gradually, however, VIA is also moving into

the processor market. Last year, it took over the Cyrix processor business from

National Semiconductor, and soon afterwards also took over IDT’s Centaur

processor design subsidiary. This year, it combined the two and reintroduced the

Cyrix processor with a different design altogether. The new processor, called

the VIA Cyrix III, is fully compatible with Socket 370 motherboards, has a 256

kB L2 cache, and supports 133 MHz FSB. Though we didn’t hear much about the

processor after its launch this year, it could give Intel’s Celeron and AMD’s

Duron healthy competition in future. And that’s good news for PC buyers.

Intel had its share of bad news this year. First, it had to

recall 820 chipset based SDRAM motherboards. Then it had to recall its 1.13 GHz

PIII processors. On the upside, the latest news is that Intel has achieved 0.13

micron circuitry in integrated circuits. To explain this further, one micron is

one-thousandth of a millimeter, and is used for measuring line width of

circuitry in microchips. To give you a realistic picture, a human hair is said

to be about 50 microns wide. Most modern microprocessors are built using 0.18

micron technology. By making the width smaller, more circuitry can be built in

the same area, and processor speeds will zip into multi-gigahertz as an outcome.

Looks like this technology establishes the continuing validity of Moore’s Law,

which says that the number of transistors per square inch of ICs doubles every

year.

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More good news comes with Intel’s new Pentium 4 processor

that has a 400 MHz FSB and runs at 1.4 GHz onwards. The first Itanium processor–the

64-bit processor codenamed Merced–is also getting ready for commercial

release. Merced has been under development for around five years. Hopefully, we’ll

see it in the market next year. Intel’s biggest rival in processors–AMD–also

plans to bring out a similar processor, codenamed SledgeHammer. Unlike the

Itanium, which will be pure 64-bit, this 64-bit processor will be backward

compatible to 32-bit code.

We can’t end the discussion about processors without

talking about the PowerPC. The latest PowerPC processor is the G4, which has

been developed by Apple, IBM, and Motorola. G5 and G6, the future versions of

the G4, –are currently in the pipeline.

The little grain of sand is surely doing wonders for Man.

Anil Chopra

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