4.6 2.1.2. solid state era  (Page 6/11)

In 1977, a complete stand-alone Personal Computer by the name APPLE II was launched at West Coast Computer Fair. It used MOS 6502μP. It had 1MHz clock rate, 4kB memory and Integer Basic (its driving software) written in ROM.

In 1981, IBM introduced PC5150 based on Intel 8088μP.It had a memory of 40kB RAM. It had floppy disc drive for loading the Operating System.

Multi-Core Processors : By scaling we improved processor speed but simultaneously over-heating problem was caused. Hence instruction level parallism was introduced. This is known as Superscalar Architecture. Quadrupling the physical resources led to linear increase in computational performance. In 2005, Intel marketed first dual-core Pentium-D. Today eight-core Pentium 4 ^th Generation Intel Core i7 Processor uses hyperthreading technology. This technology allows each processor core to work on two tasks at the same time improving multi-tasking, speeding up the work flow and accomplishing more in less time.

Supercomputers and present day multi-core Personal Computer: The fastest supercomputer has reached the top speed of 10 Peta FLOPS(10×10 ¹⁵ Floating-Point Operations per Second). These machines can solve huge complex problems that a PC cannot even touch. Some of the problems solved by supercomputers are: Weather Fore-casting, Complex problems of Quantum Physics, huge simulations pertaining nuclear chain reaction. These super-computers are room-sized and expensive. But the advancements in Solid State Technology has allowed present day PCs also to work at a fraction of Supercomputer’s Computational Power. Adapteva has developed Parallela Platform which can run at 90GFLOPS. Intel 750 can run at 9GFLOPS.

Foundaries and Fabless Companies : Very early in IC chips design and fabrication an innovative business model was developed by a small group of people which became the mainstay of IC industries.

Traditional Business Model was Integrated Device Manufacturing. Intel, AMD and Samsung follow this model.The Design and Fabrication was done under one roof. But in the new model, Fabless Company focuses on concept, development, design, sales and marketing.The Fabless Companies are:Qualcomm, Broadcomm,Nivida and Apple. The design is sent to the Foundaries which carry out the actual fabrication in bulk – mask making, diffusion, metallization, splitting the dies, mounting the dies on headers, bonding the die pond pads to the external leads and packaging. The ready packages of IC Chips are sent back to the Parent Companies who will do the actual marketing.

The few Foundaries in the World are:Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Global Foundaries in UAE, IBM foundary in USA, Samsung Semiconductor in South Korea, SMIC in China, Tower Jazz in Israel, SSMC in Singapore and X-Fab in Germany. Unfortunately we in India had Semiconctor Complex Limited in Chandygarh but it could not grow into a full scale foundrey.

The top Fabless compnies are QUALCOMM(USA), BroadCom(USA), AMD(USA),NIVIDA(USA) and Marvell(USA). Today the Foundaries and Fabless Companies are responsible for 5 Trillion Dollar worth of World Production which is 1/10 of total World Production of Merchandise of worth $50 Trillion. These are Semiconductor chips, its related systems and services. Semiconductor Industry has become the main engine of growth of the World Economy.