By contrast, check out today's announcement from Big Blue: Its new flagship eServer zSeries 990 runs up to 9 billion instructions per second on 32 processors--three times the system capacity of its predecessor z900--thanks in part to a palm-sized package of copper and silicon-on-insulator semiconductors with over 3.2 billion transistors and 500 meters of ultra-thin wire.

FORBES: IBM Does The On-Demand Dance

The three main types of thin film technologies use cadmium-telluride, copper-indium-gallium-selenide and amorphous-silicon to convert sunlight into electricity.

FORBES: First Solar Struggles Amid Decline Of Thin-Film Solar Market

G6 mainframe computer depends on the use of silicon chips with copper connections that draw on solid-state physics research done in the firm's laboratory in the 1980s.

ECONOMIST: Philips

Nanosolar is one of several Silicon Valley startups that have attracted billions of dollars in venture capital to develop a thin-film technology called copper indium gallium selenide, or CIGS. Such solar cells use little expensive silicon, the main ingredient of conventional photovoltaic cells.

FORBES: Nanosolar Snares a Gigawatt in Orders for its Thin-Film Solar Panels