The latest round of spectrum allocations from the FCC seems to have an air of unreality about it. For example, what is the point of allocating space at 60 GHz for wireless LAN applications? Isn’t it obvious that the prime real estate is much closer to the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands that are currently in use?

Well, maybe not. A recent advance from IBM brings RF chips into the realm of commercial possibility that can handle those frequencies. These are not high-end, expensive chips, either. These are chips that can be produced in commercial quantities at consumer price points. Rather than silicon, these are based around silicon germanium and can handle frequencies well above 100 GHz, according to the EE Times article.

Granted, these are support chips, not CPUs. Maybe you could build a 100 GHz CPU out of SiGe, but there is no way you could build a memory subsystem to keep up with it. These chips will enable radar systems for automobiles and build networks with short enough wavelengths to communicate with nanotechnological devices that were described in another EE Times article as one of five deep R&D projects that must succeed. Other projects in the list will tie these devices even tighter into a global computer network that will handle projects we can only dream about now.

Maybe innovation and basic R&D isn’t in quite as bad a shape as we thought…

Larry Mittag