A new silicon-germanium semiconductor chip produced by IBM reached 500 GHz in tests recently, setting a new speed record for a computer chip.

 

The test was conducted at 4.5 Kelvin (-451 degrees Fahrenheit), but the chip still reached 350 GHz at room temperature. It promises to start the next generation of powerful computing chips before quantum computing becomes feasible.

 

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189500692

why oh why am i doubting that this thing has more than a few hundered transistiors... for a clock frequency that fast the chip is probably tiny and wouldn't stand up against other chips with regards to FLOPS.

still, it would be pretty cool to play something on a 500GHz chip no graphics card required, superb physics etc. etc.

Looks like the transistor has some life in it yet

That certainly is great news for researchers and large corporations, I wonder how fast a room temperature or liquid nitrogen computer would be. I suspected that the final electronic computers would be chryo-cooled.