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14/11/01/0325231 story

DARPA Circuit Achieves Speed of 1 THz—Earns Guinness World Record

posted by martyb on Saturday November 01 2014, @06:39AM   
from the quick-ticks dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Officials from Guinness World Records today recognized DARPA’s Terahertz Electronics program for creating the fastest solid-state amplifier integrated circuit ever measured. The ten-stage, common-source amplifier operates at a speed of one terahertz (10^12 Hz), or one trillion cycles per second—150 billion cycles faster than the existing world record of 850 gigahertz set in 2012.

"Terahertz circuits promise to open up new areas of research and unforeseen applications in the sub-millimeter-wave spectrum, in addition to bringing unprecedented performance to circuits operating at more conventional frequencies,” said Dev Palmer, DARPA program manager. “This breakthrough could lead to revolutionary technologies such as high-resolution security imaging systems, improved collision-avoidance radar, communications networks with many times the capacity of current systems and spectrometers that could detect potentially dangerous chemicals and explosives with much greater sensitivity."

• What material did they use? What material did they use? (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @07:37AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @07:37AM (#112145)

  Previous efforts seem to have used gallium arsenide or gallium nitride.
  Maybe they goosed that stuff a bit--or are they using graphene now?

  The only thing I've seen that gives any clue about anything at all is "common source".

  -- gewg_

  • Re:What material did they use? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @07:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @07:59AM (#112146)

    Oh, there it is. (Clicked the link but didn't read that page.)
    Indium phosphide. [wikipedia.org]

    -- gewg_

    Parent

• I don't understand I don't understand (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @02:13PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @02:13PM (#112198)

  Can somebody describe the speed in something the common man can understand? You know, Libraries of Congress filled football stadiums or something.

  • Re:I don't understand (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @03:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 01 2014, @03:31PM (#112209)

    It's equivalent to 1000 iPod touches(5th generation).

    Parent

• Unfortunately... (Score: 2) by jasassin on Sunday November 02 2014, @02:54PM

  by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Sunday November 02 2014, @02:54PM (#112416) Homepage Journal

  It still can't play Crysis on max settings.

  --
  jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A

• May as well be (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @01:50PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @01:50PM (#112943)

  May as well be measured in Petahertz for all the good this is doing, no commercial circuit faster than 5Ghz exists.