Other Developments
In the 1980s, programmable logic devices were developed. These devices contain circuits whose logical function and connectivity can be programmed by the user, rather than being fixed by the integrated circuit manufacturer. This allows a single chip to be programmed to implement different LSI-type functions such as logic gates, adders and registers. Current devices called field-programmable gate arrays can now implement tens of thousands of LSI circuits in parallel and operate up to 1.5 GHz (Achronix holding the speed record).
The techniques perfected by the integrated circuits industry over the last three decades have been used to create very small mechanical devices driven by electricity using a technology known as microelectromechanical systems. These devices are used in a variety of commercial and military applications. Example commercial applications include DLP projectors, inkjet printers, and accelerometers used to deploy automobile airbags.
In the past, radios could not be fabricated in the same low-cost processes as microprocessors. But since 1998, a large number of radio chips have been developed using CMOS processes. Examples include Intel's DECT cordless phone, or Atheros's 802.11 card.
Future developments seem to follow the multi-core multi-microprocessor paradigm, already used by the Intel and AMD dual-core processors. Rapport Inc. and IBM started shipping the KC256 in 2006, a 256-core microprocessor. Intel recently unveiled a prototype, "not for commercial sale" chip that bears 80 cores. Each core is capable of handling its own task independently of the others. This is in response to the heat-versus-speed limit that is about to be reached using existing transistor technology. This design provides a new challenge to chip programming. Parallel programming languages such as the open-source X10 programming language are designed to assist with this task.
Since the early 2000s, the integration of optical functionality into silicon chips has been actively pursued in both academic research and in industry resulting in the successful commercialization of silicon based integrated optical transceivers combining optical devices (modulators, detectors, routing) with CMOS based electronics.
Read more about this topic: Integrated Circuit
Famous quotes containing the word developments:
“I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.”
—C. Vann Woodward (b. 1908)