IBM says alters silicon's behavior to power new chip

"SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 6 (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it had developed new chipmaking methods that will allow its upcoming Power6 computer processor to run twice as fast as current versions.
Instead of just making transistors smaller, IBM came up with a process to alter how silicon behaves by placing a layer of insulator underneath a layer of silicon less than 500 atoms thick, said Bernard Meyerson, chief technologist of IBM's technology group.

'You literally can squeeze silicon, and thereby give it properties to make it faster. The thing that is making it run faster is not just that it's smaller but because you're changing its basic physical properties,' Meyerson told Reuters in an interview.
IBM's advances mean its Power6 chip, due in the middle of 2007, will run at speeds between 4 and 5 gigahertz, at least double the speed of current Power chips found in server computers that run corporate networks, Meyerson said."