IBM has announced that they are developing a prototype that can exchange data at speeds 10 times faster than the current standard wireless network chips (54 Mb/s).
Brian Gaucher, an expert at IBM’s research facility in Yorktown Heights, New York, stated that in a laboratory environment, this chip can transmit information at a speed of 630 Mb/s, with plans to increase this to 1 GB or 5 GB/s in the coming years.
This is a hybrid chip that utilizes both silicon and germanium but can still be manufactured using conventional production lines. It operates at a clock speed of 60 GHz, significantly faster than the existing technologies that operate at 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz.
Currently, IBM’s chip operates at a range of approximately 10 meters, making it capable of replacing video cables for digital TVs in living rooms. In the near future, the company aims to extend this range to 100 meters, similar to current Wi-Fi chips.
IBM’s research team will showcase the product at the ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference), which gathers hundreds of engineers from semiconductor companies worldwide, taking place this week in San Francisco, and plans to launch it commercially in 2007.
