MIT researchers claim that a new material called graphene that was discovered in 2004 could be used to develop computer chips with clock speed as high as 1,000GHz. Graphene is a type of pure carbon that’s only one-atom thick and has been already used by engineers to make prototype transistors and other simple devices. MIT researchers have taken one step further in their latest effort and developed a prototype frequency multiplier that can take the clock speed of a computer chip and produce an output signal that is a multiple of that frequency.

“In electronics, we’re always trying to increase the frequency in order to make faster and faster computers,” said Tomas Palacios, assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “It’s very difficult to generate high frequencies above four or five gigahertz, but the new graphene technology could lead to practical systems in the 500 to 1000 GHz range.”

The top of the line computer chips based on silicon available today requires insane amount of cooling to break the 5GHz barrier. By using graphene, speed of computer chip can be increase hundred times without the need of expensive cooling methods. According to Palacios, graphene will be ready for commercial use within two years, though computer chips using graphene could take little longer.
[Via PC Pro]