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IBM says it has broken the world record for the fastest computer chip.
Manufacturers have raced to develop faster chips as one response to the
worldwide slump in computer sales. The chip, made using a mixture of silicon and
germanium instead of pure silicon, runs at more than 110 gigahertz—that’s
110 billion cycles a second. Intel’s standard Pentium 4 chip runs at up to 2.2
gigahertz. The new chips, which should be on the market by the end of this year,
need less power and less room than their predecessors, says Bernard Meyerson of
IBM’s Communications Research and Development Center, New York.…