Motorola, TRW develop new chip with more power

Motorola Inc and TRW Inc have announced the development of the CPUAX SuperChip, a 'supercomputer' chip that incorporates important technological breakthroughs. The device contains four million transistors and can process 200 million floating point operations a second. TRW claims that the chip contains everything necessary to be an entire computer. The chip, they say, can perform tasks that currently require a computer the size of a room. The CPUAX, which was designed for the US Navy, has the most dense architecture yet created, but it will have little market impact immediately. More important now, are the development techniques that were necessary for this chip, which can be applied to current operations. With the help of a second chip called a satellite chip, the SuperChip will be able to monitor its workings and switch to alternate circuits should an internal failure occur.