Alpha breaks plateau operating chip at room temperature.

The people at Alpha Processor Inc. have demonstrated a new chip that runs at the speed of 1 gigahertz (or 1,000MHz) at PC Expo 1999. That_s nearly twice the speed of today_s fastest Intel Pentium chip. Alpha is on the PC Expo floor this week showing off its achievement: One of its 64-bit, 21264 processor chips is running at 1 GHz. At room temperature. No refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, ice cubes or liquid-bearing cooling tubes. Just some fans on the processor and a well-vented tower box. The screen attached to the 1GHz computer was running a program that shows just how fast it_s doing its thing. Sure enough, the number was constantly changing from something like 0.98765 GHz to 1.01234 GHz. At the moment, Alpha is showing off only one chip running at that speed. The top processor the company is currently marketing runs at 667 MHz. A 750 MHz chip is due in August. The 1 GHz chip is expected within a year. The competition is Intel_s Pentium III Xeon, currently running at 550MHz. A 600MHz version is expected in a few weeks. If you_re spending top dollar for a fast server, you want your server to be fast. If you_re buying the biggest and best, you want the most bang for the buck. Alpha demonstrated exactly what this means in practical terms.