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Single-Atom Transistor
zarsky99 writes: "EETimes is reporting that Japanese researchers are close to creating the world's first single-atom transistor. This could be a boon to power problems and Moore's Law. The article is here, and please enjoy. Now if they could only get a single girl to date me." OK, you take the transistor, I'll take the girl ;)
J adds: For those of you graphing Moore's Wacky Law:
November1999, 50nm;
November1999, 18nm;
October2000, 1nm;
December2000, 30nm;
five days ago, 30nm.
We don't make the semiconductors, we just report 'em.
The transistor itself contains several atoms, although it's still MUCH smaller than today's devices. A one-electron difference in charge on the transistor's gate is all that's needed to switch it on/off.
Okay, it's been quite a long time since I took high school chemistry, so maybe something radical changed in the field since then. But I distinctly recall only about 200 to 250 possible elements. Which isotype of which element does this single atom belong to?
...yes, Slashdot goofed again (does this surprise anyone). They read the eeTimes' equally innacurate headline and never bothered to read the article. Quoting the real information, we find that:
... a 10-atom-diameter cluster of 500 silver atoms that acts as a capacitor...
Oh hell! This can't possibly be right. Not even Japan can alter the laws of physics. Let me read the article to see what the truth of the matter is...
The transistor Aono is developing makes a switch circuit consisting of
and
"We can make an atomic switch in a cluster of silver atoms"
Very amazing. But it's not a "Single-Atom Transistor" like Slashdot says. The key component in the transistor may be a single atom, but the transistor itself is not.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
what the heck is with the remark about single girls at the end? Is that a joke? I don't see the contextual relevance... The poor /. posters are so sexually frustrated and neurotic that it's spilling over into news posts about atom-sized transistors! Now if only I could get that girl's phone number. . . .
So where will we be next Monday?
Still without dates, most of us.
If you read the article, its a group of atoms arranged so that 1 electron makes the difference between open and closed.
Its not a single atom transistor, its a transistor switched on or off by a single electron.
All your base/collector/emitter belongs to us.
Naah, they start with Lawrencium 262, then in a few months they kick out a few neutrons and protons to make Fermium 256 (just to make these calculations easier). Then, with 18 month steps: Xenon 128, Zirconium 64, Sulphur 32, Oxygen 16, Beryllium 8 (9 is more stable though), Helium 4, Hydrogen 2, and finally Hydrogen 1 (ehm...a single proton).
Thus, it takes 12 years before they have to go to subatomics!
While the single-atom transistor thing is cool, it seems to me that the interesting part of this discovery/invention is the super-tiny wires they have to connect them. Now THAT's cool, and a big problem down there at the nano(pico?)-scale level.
What I want to know is, how will they connect this with normal electronics? They'd probably need 5 or 6 buffers in between to step down the current so as not to fry the tiny wires. Also, wouldn't a chip made with this technology be super-sensitive to interference? If a random cosmic ray hit it, it would probably be fried.
Hope they can solve all the problems. This sounds like really cool technology.
[me@localhost]$ prolog
| ?- god.
! Existence error in god/0
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Anyway it is a step, now we need the leap. What would really be neat is to see smaller PC parts today. A 2" network card and a 2" modem connecting to an 8"x6" MB would be sweet. Then my pc would be cut down to about 1/3 its current size. A cdrom drive that only 1/2 the cd went it rather than a drawer. Hmmm
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
As seen on Slashdot:
:-)
Sunday March 04, @08:37AM - Transistors 3 atoms wide
Thursday March 08, @08:08PM - Transistors 1 atom wide
So where will we be next Monday?
arnald
...that after they make these things, they're careful to remember where they put them.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
- They are often biased
- They often amplify things out of proportion
- They can switch their minds in an instant
- They are often non-linear
- They consume energy
RTFA. That's basic research you're bitching about, not superfast CPU development.
Better fab processes improve all the microcircuitry, not just the main processor.
Incidentally, the old modular tech you can snap together with thick, clumsy fingers can't be improved much further, which is why it's lagging. There's no sense bitching about your cheap swappable DIMMs when you won't shell out for faster RAM or buy a non-expandable machine. There is faster RAM available, it's just more expensive and needs a special set-up. Same thing for hard drives; people buy gigs, not MB/s. The market's producing what people want: layered caching of inexpensive, immense data stores.
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30 nautical miles is one friggin' huge transistor!
--
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
There is a thing about Moore's Law and Power density. power density keeps going up with increasing density of computational activity. At some point it gets so dense that we need insane cooling, or else we are using warp cores for computational exercises. [perks up at the thought]
Now there is a idea. Subatomic quantum computing using a warp core. That should keep Moore's law going for a while.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
a new catch phrase? "Yeah my paycheck is so nano".
/. is irrelevant.
By the way, really good Russian girls are here: http://bride.ru/
So, if it's a single atom, is it an existing element, or do we now get Transistorium? Just curious.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
They found an element capable of being a transistor and are trying to market it. Either that or some physics nerd has waaaaay too much time on his hands....
And people call _ME_ a nerd...
I am !amused.
Speaking of Moore's Law, does this mean that in 18 months we'll have scientists promising half-atom transistors? Now that'll be really interesting . . .
(Disclaimer: don't bother flame^H^H^H^H^Hcorrecting me about Moore's Law not really being a law. I know that; I'm just joking.)
The Intel Pentium XIII only costs $1.99 but the STM to install it in its socket costs upwards of several million...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Easy, it's the one surrounded by 6 x 10^23 microfans.
Basically, all the angels dancing on the head of a pin, keeping it cool.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
<joke>
Now, if they created multiple-atom transitors, and you couldn't get multiple girls to date you, what makes you think that a single atom transitor is going to get you a single girl to date you?
</joke-cuz-ive-been-there-too>
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
(What was the title of that story, by the way?)
--
See? It works like that.
---
Have you considered calling an outcall (escort) service?
They claim 1Tb on a 10cm^2 die. Let's assume
1 transistor per bit (pessimistic).
That's 1 x 10^11 transistors on a cm^2 die.
Do you realize how much SRAM memory that translates into? Roughly 2GB, with
enough transistors left over to have a CPU on the same die.
WITH A CPU LIKE THAT...
WHO NEEDS A MEMORY SUBSYSTEM?
Just give the thing some I/O pins to talk
to a bus!
PeterM
Emperor: This is only one finger. How can you make a tool?
Researcher: We can pick up a grain of rice when we wet the tip of our finger. That force is some kind of tool.
Now that is the way to dumb things down for management and VIPs.
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Intel announced a PROCESS, not a prototype. The one buckyball transistor was a PROTOTYPE, not PROCESS. These are NOT the same.
A PROCESS is a way of actually manufacturing the transistor, a PROTOTYPE is simply the EXISTENCE of a transistor.
Intel could manufacture the 30nm transistor, however the 1nm transistor is merely a lab toy.
There is a HUGE distinction, get it straight.
i hate to let myself be trolled, but...
smoke crack much?
Just look at some of the benchmarks on Tom'sHardware. The majority of them are all dead even after processor speeds hit 8 or 9 hundred Mhz.
Some of the newer Athlon processors have 12x multipliers. That means the processor is working 12 times as fast as the rest of the system. This is wasteful, and you end up with a lot of dead processor cycles because the RAM/system bus can't provide enough data for processing. Manufacturer's need to stop throwing money at superfast processor development, and work on improving system bus speeds, and latency/throughput of RAM.
"Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or dead." -Kurt Cobain
And the half-life of Transistorium is eighteen parsecs?