Super Chips:

"We are in the middle of a true revolution in media -- the change
from chemical processes to electronic ones." (Michael Schulhof in
Miller, 1989)


Current chip technology appears to impose a limit of 20 million
devices per chip.  At that density, interconnections become so
narrow that the electron flow is insufficient to turn the chip's
transistors on/off. (George Heilmeier, Texas Inst.)  Designers
are now working on the billion transistor chip that future
applications will demand.  It is believed that these capacities
can be achieved by either stacking transistors in layers on a
single chip, or by making wafers that consist of many chips. 
Either strategy promises powerful processing components and
significant increases in processing speed.  Superchips will be
self-contained processing units capable of multiple tasks.  These
advances will contribute to the development of parallel
processing systems appropriate to a broad market of users and
applications.  Power intensive applications such as 3-D animation
in real time will become more cost effective, permitting desktop
systems to have sophisticated graphic simulation capabilities
(Waldman, 1989).

As an example of a super chip application already making its way
to market, the NeXT computer has a microchip digital signal
processor (Motorola, Inc.) that controls the system's audio
capabilities.  The chip contains three subprocessors that work
simultaneously to manage massive quantities of digital audio
data, enabling the system to produce music, songs, and speech. 
The input audio signals are converted from analog to digital
format, compressed, and stored to disk.  Output is converted back
to analog for broadcast over conventional speakers.  The digital
signal processor also serves as a high speed modem (9600 baud),
and can be used for computer to computer network links.  Future
versions of the NeXT computer are expected to use the chip to
support complex graphics capabilities.  Pixar, Inc. is already
using the chip technology for animation applications,
significantly increasing the speed of display, in an attempt to
generate real time animation (Waldman, 1989). 

<ffile29>   Monitoring Technological Developments
<ffile30>   Superconductors
<ffile88>   Man to Machine: Research