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How Printable Computers Will Work
Gart points to this article on printable computers, an "Illustrated narrative [that] shows how users will simply download microchip designs from the Internet and print out a working ink-based, plastic processor on a desktop fabrication machine, similar to an ink jet printer." This is a nicely lucid account, and straightforward about the reasons that you probably won't start printing out a new motherboard this evening. Still, a glimpse of the future; this is one technology it will be cool to watch emerge from vapor.
This reminds me of a book called "'A' For Everything" where an inventor created a duplicating device. You put the object you want duplicated on one side, and press a button, and a copy comes out on the other side. Within hours almost everyone had one. Within days the economy had reverted to Slaves being the only valuable form of property. From there people figured out how to clone other people using the device and a bizarre slave/owner hierarchy was born. A very interesting book, I recommend it to everyone.
Kintanon
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However, I doubt we'll see any sort of IC fabs capable of producing anything as complicated as say, a 555, on the desktop within the next 50 years. Call me skeptical.
Electronics buffs, we build stuff that we download, design, read in books, etc. Automation would be getting access to a plotter or a UV rig for making PCB construction much, much easier.
-bugg
Check it out here!
Its true the density isn't as great, but in this case the medium is just a piece of plastic, not a VERY expensive piece of silicon, so real estate is not a commodity... however it sounds like their switching times are much slower then silicon transistors ... given that and the distance between the resistors growing (because they're less dense) it sounds like the problem will infact be speed.
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I had a dream some months ago.
Printable PDA's were developed. You could have them printed on the surface of your skin. No more need to wear a wristwatch, you would just print a PDA on your wrist.
Problem was (in the dream) that they would wear off, and you would have to have them reprinted (Or have a newer better model printed) onto your wrist.
They became so common that everyone had to have on in order to just carry on daily life, business transactions, etc.
Poor people couldn't afford $40/mo to print these things on their wrists.
So good ol' corporate greed stepped in to help. You could get a sponsored low-end PDA printed onto your right hand by agreeing to also have a color animated advertising banner printed across your forehead. Next month, come back, pay homage to corporate greed. Repeat.
Don't laugh. I really did dream this. (I said, no laughing.)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, use Windows.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Now that's the real trick, isn't it? In modern integrated circuit design the interconnect uses up more area than the transistors. Even if you could do all the wiring in other layers (by the way, only VERY recently have ICs come out with lots of layers. One or two wiring layers was the standard for YEARS) you would still need lots of vias to move the signals between layers and down to the transistors.
And as for cost, I just checked MOSIS and if you needed a 6.5mm by 6.5mm square silicon chip fabbed, MOSIS would charge you about $70000 for a lot of 25! Kind of pricey for a 68k processor, don't you think?
There are a lot of reasons silicon is useful, and I'd be VERY suprised if people started printing chips out on their desks.
downloadable and printable hardware, if it develops to fruition, will destroy the need for a computer hardware insdustry in certain sectors.
the gamers, the kids, everyone who uses their computers as a hot rod and doesn't have mission critical stuff running on them, will pirate hardware.
There could be a licensing agreement, but how do you track pirated hardware? use it on the Net and it sends out a call signal? I don't think so. Even if it could be traced, people would just set up parallel intranet networks with the stuff instead of using it on the Internet, where cops, et al could track it.
All in all, opening the doors to terrorists, foreign intelligence agencies, and anybody else who wants to reliably gather information without much expenditure and without being traced.
Goat sex free since 2001
It seems like once they have perfected this tech, a natural extension would be to repeatedly overprint with layers of conductive, nonconductive, and semiconductor ink to create a 3-D circuit. This could go a long way toward offsetting the registration size and natural slowness of the junctions, since you could stack them into a cube. If the layer size is comparable to the junction size, you could end up with breathtaking densities. With good massively parallel architecture such blocks -- they wouldn't be flexible and would probably be more like regular IC's once manufabbed -- might dwarf the performance of single-layer silicon.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Don't underestimate the importance of this.
I predict one of the earliest practical application will be a real credit-card calculator -- one the same size and thickness as your credit cards. Feature size will probably go down at about the same rate it has for silicon. Remember, back in the 70's feature size on silicon wasn't much better than what these guys are aiming for. And neither was the speed -- remember 4000 series CMOS? Yet these chips were the backbone of all technology when they were expensive.
This was a good article, well balanced and without a lot of the usual hype about how the tech will result in self-assembling skyscrapers. These people have modest, achievable goals. It will be interesting to see what they do.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
This will bring a whole new definition to the word "warez"
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"Against stupidity the very god themselves contend in vain" -Johann Schiller
Cripes, I'm old.
It must be 20 years ago now that Carver Mead was talking about having a machine on your desk that would fabricate silicon integrated circuits for you.
Anyone who's seen a fab line knows it's not that simple. The closest anyone came was e-beam lithography, but those machines are still the size of your bathroom, and still only do some of the processes.
It's pretty interesting to think about printing chip layers like a multi-pass color laser printer.
But can you imagine the toner-cartridge spam you'll get when there are ten kinds of toner material needed, and some run ten bucks a pass?
--Blair
"Dammit! I left my TiVo folded up in my pocket and it went through the wash again..."
One of the critical problems for long distance space endevours is what to do when/if you need to replace hardware in your systems when you're far far away from any fab plant. This kind of technology will go a long way to making the problem moot.
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
This article has a few more facts about this technology, and its references are from journals like "Science" and "Applied Physics Letters" and "Chemical Review," so you can do some in-depth research if you wish. It's not so complicated that the layman could not read it, and it has some information not covered in the howstuffworks.com article. I did like some of the pictures in the howstuffworks.com article.
The electron mobility in polymers is MUCH lower than Si (a slow semiconductor), a fact that is mentioned in the article, but glossed over on this page. Overclocking these guys still won't get you very far.
One thing not mentioned is the short shelf life of these things. They tend to degrade in days to weeks, depending on the material.
I could go on, but I won't. I'm just glad to see this finally out in the popular media.
They are talking about achieving a 25 micron feature size. The current generation of processors is being done with an 0.13 micron feature size, meaning that the number of gates you can fit on your plastic chip is about 40000 (200 times 200) times lower.
Still, if they can get one transistor in 25 microns square, and handle all the wiring in other layers:
Trying to get much bigger than this (do the P5 in two inches square) is likely to be a loser because getting the signals across these large chips is going to be slow unless you use enough power to melt the plastic.
Memory: if you can do one bit in 25 by 25 microns, a square inch (2.54 cm on a side) gives just over one megabit (bits, not bytes). You're probably not going to be running Gnome or KDE on this.
... until they figure out a way to download and print a Pizza.
... hmmm
"Hello, Domino's? Can you e-mail me a large pizza with mushrooms and extra cheese?"
But then, that might bring a whole new meaning to "Spam Mail"
I wonder if they realize they are only going to sell a handful of these things... The first guy to get one of these printers is just going to print up more printers for his friends...
Trojan hardware.
In the future... motherboards may be nothing more than layers of nonconducting materials with thin conductors connecting various chips and sockets (into which other boards can be connected). Imagine the possibilities!
The same way that literacy, pencils, pens, ink, paper, and books destroyed the iron grip of the autocracy and nobility of hundreds of years ago, printable computers can break the grip of monolithic oligarchies dictating hardware and standards to people who don't need them.
Don't you have any sense of decency, to post such utter garbage in the first place, perdida?
(go ahead mark me as troll or whatever, it really doesn't matter)
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar