Fast just got faster

How fast is fast enough?

You can tell a true American by the answer: There is no such thing as too fast.

So you are going to be pleased that researchers for IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology have managed to build a computer chip that is over 250 times faster than the stuff you've likely got operating in your desktop or laptop today.

It's still silicon-based, but it's been frozen to - get this - a negative 451 Farenheit. (There ought to be some ironic remark to make about that, but it's still too early for our analog brain cells). This is just 9 degrees above absolute zero, and weird things happen when you freeze stuff at that level. Brought back to room temperature, it operates at 350 gigahertz. That's almost 160 times faster than the Oklahomilist's fairly tame 2.2 gig processor.

Naturally, we can imagine all sorts of productivity increases with the new chips, which should be in commercial applications in the next 12 to 24 months. Where the chips will be most noticed, we imagine, will be in networks, both wired and wireless. So much for the adage that the computer industry "doubles" its speed every 'x' number of months. The graph just flew off scale.

We're gonna need brain implants just to be able to use this stuff.