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Isotropic Silicon?
jmichaelg asks: "The Register ran this story on isotropic silicon. Among the claims for isotropic silicon is that with a more homogenous lattice, heat is more evenly distributed. That means processors can reach higher speeds simply by being manufactured using isotropic silicon wafers. There's a sidebar at The Register about 1.7 Ghz Athlons manufactured with this stuff. According to the manufacturer's FAQ, isotropic silicon is produced chemically. Is this possible? I thought isotopes were chemically identical and differed only in the number of neutrons they have. Is this real or is it marketing froth?"
Call me silly, but why bother going through tons of very hard processies (I belive isotopes can be derived/speperated through chemical processies..but its HARD!)just to keep on using silicon? There are far better semiconductors out there. Gold for instance, when put in the proper geomeric shapes (at molecular levels) becomes a semiconductor with many more logic levels the silicon. Silicon has two. Gold has the possibility of having 7 or more. (lookup nanoscale physics if your interested, I only have very curssory knowedge of the subject)
Why not spend the reasearch money on developing processors with other better semiconducts is all i'm saying? Instead of putting more and more into an almost tapped out tech (like how we still do research into gasoline internal combustion engines, when we should be doing research on power cells and other eletric vehicles)
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
There is a difference between isotopic and isotropic. Isotopes are variants of an atom. If I remember wel being isotropic is a property of the crystal lattice atoms are placed in. It means some other property is independent of its relation to the direction of the crystal axes. Isotropic means "the same in all directions", I believe.
Sigh
This technology uses high-power frequency-selective energy sources, like LASER and MASER, in which the previously soviet union was the undisputed leader. Imagine that.
By making all the atoms in a crystalline latice the same mass, their positions become very regular, and this supposedly helps heat transfer.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
I am concerned about the origins of the technology and the ability of any process to generate it "scaling up" to the kinds of quantities required for a chip fab.
I'm also highly skeptical that a firm in the former USSR will be able to pull it off - from an investment standpoint, it's a quagmire of accounting practices that border on the fraudulent, and the rule of law has yet to be established.
Given the other uses for isotope-refining techniques, I'd expect some concerns from a proliferation standpoint. Yes, Si ought be a helluvalot easier to separate than the heavy elements, but any technology that can produce large quantities of isotopically-pure Si could likewise be adapted to produce large quantities of isotopically-pure lighter elements.
Finally, as much as we hate IP lawyers around here, there's the matter of patents. Who holds the patent on the gadget? What's to prevent others from using it? (This matters because the spin of the story is that this technology will benefit AMD more than INTC within the next year or two, arguably with an eye to predicting stock prices of both, or with regards to the stock of the Si-producing company.)
So some scientists have a neat gadget, likely a spinoff of former USSR nuke work. Cool, and it may spur interesting further research. But I don't see it having a major impact in chipmaking technology in the immediate future.
It'd be great if it's (a) true, (b) scales up, and (c) presents no proliferation risk. But all three of those things have to be true for it to matter. Put me in the "wait and see" category.