IP: More on Internet Refrigerator -- a callenge to Intel

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

'Internet Refrigerator' Aimed for 1999 Commercial Use (MORE)


May 1 (Washington) -- According to a report soon to be published by
Forester Research, the recently announced 'Internet refrigerator' is the
first release of a product whose development path poses a direct challenge
to the dominance of US chip maker Intel in supplying the 'brainpower' for
the multi-billion-dollar per year personal computer market.


An anonymous source within the Bemidji, MN IT research firm has revealed
that the program of quarterly 'incremental improvements' at which the
Japanese consumer electronics industry excels does not stop with moving the
PC from the top of the refrigerator to the refrigerator door.  The next
step will move the 'mother board' **inside** the refrigerator's freezer
compartment itself, and within 18 months after first release of the product
the Intel chips will be replaced by ultrafast Josephson junction devices
that 'leapfrog' all current and planned Intel technology to achieve
processor speeds in the terahertz range.


The Josephson junction devices will employ embedded thermionic coolers that
'bootstrap' the refrigerator's already low freezer temperature to achieve
the near-absolute-zero temperatures required for the Josephson effect, the
source said.


While not commenting on the validity of the report, Forester's Dr. P.
Bunyan speculated that if true, then even later models would likely cool
the entire 'motherboard', allowing the use of superconducting
('zero-resistance') wire to interconnect the chips which would further
reduce latency and increase the speed of the 'personal superconducting
supercomputer'.


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