DARPA, the US military’s R&D division, has been awarded a Guinness World Record for creating the world’s fastest solid-state chip, clocked at one terahertz — or 1,000 gigahertz, if that’s easier to digest. DARPA’s chip handily beats out the previous record holder, which was only capable of a paltry 850GHz. Computers and radio systems that operate up in the terahertz range have some very interesting and powerful properties, from the creation of hand-held tricorders and security scanners, through to wireless networks that are hundreds of times faster than 2.4 and 5GHz WiFi.

DARPA has been interested in terahertz chips for a long while now — not so much for super-fast computers (though they are being looked at), but for creating radio waves in the sub-millimeter-wave terahertz range. These waves (sometimes called T-rays), as far as the military are concerned, are a prime way of supercharging everything from radar, to imaging and reconnaissance, to ultra-high-bandwidth wireless networks. Basically, because the wavelength of T-rays are so short (less than a millimeter), they can provide much higher resolution than, say, conventional radar, which uses frequencies of a much longer wavelength (anywhere from 100 meters to a few centimeters). The density of T-rays makes them very good for carrying large amounts of data, too — and, as an added bonus, they’re very good at safely penetrating a few millimeters of skin (yes, airports are interested in terahertz security scanners).

Read: How terahertz laser scanners will spy on you in airports

As you can imagine, though, it’s hard to build a chip that’s capable of switching on and off one trillion times per second. That seems to be the main breakthrough here: DARPA, working with Northrop Grumann, have built a 10-stage monolithic amplifier using fairly standard CMOS processes. Exact details aren’t available, but I believe the chip is fabricated out of indium phosphide (InP), which is capable of switching at much higher frequencies (and at higher power levels) than common semiconductors such as silicon or gallium arsenide.

The DARPA/Northop chip reportedly has excellent properties, with a gain of 9dB at 1THz, and 10dB at 1.03THz. “Gains of six decibels or more start to move this research from the laboratory bench to practical applications — nine decibels of gain is unheard of at terahertz frequencies” says Dev Palmer, DARPA’s THz Electronics program manager. “This opens up new possibilities for building terahertz radio circuits.”

A solid-state amplifier is just one piece of the terahertz puzzle, of course. To actually create usable T-rays, you need a complete transceiver and antenna — and I don’t think DARPA is quite there yet. Still, the creation of transistors that are capable of switching at 1,000GHz, however, is exciting. This doesn’t mean that you’re going to magically start seeing computers that operate in the 1THz range — the power requirements and heat dissipation would be utterly insane — but we can at least begin to sketch a roadmap towards a future where everything from computers, to networks, to surveillance and medical imaging are supercharged way beyond what is currently possible.

Now read: Tiny terahertz chips can give smartphones X-ray vision, tricorder-like functionality