The IBM Gigahertz Unit Test Site (guTS) was completed early in 1997.
It contains a series of experiments in high frequency design, including
the world's first CMOS processor to achieve 1 GHz in operation speed.
The processor executes an integer subset of the 64-bit PowerPC (TM)
instruction set.
To reach the one gigahertz mark in 0.25 micron CMOS bulk technology
(rather than the 0.18 micron technology in which today's gigahertz
processors are built) without lengthening the processor's pipeline,
requires a highly tuned family of dynamic "delayed-reset"circuits,
several innovations in micro-architecture, a highly tuned floor plan
and a highly stable clock generation circuit. The processor contains
about one million transistors, and dissipates 6.3 Watts at 1 GHz.
The design was completed in about six months by a team of less than
twenty researchers. A paper that described the guTS processor was
released in 1998 at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference
(ISSCC). At that time, the guTS project and ARL received worldwide
press coverage.
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