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IBM Nanotechnology Transistor Faster than Silicon
Dustin Destree writes: "This article on MSNBC talks about how IBM has developed a new transistor based on nanotube technology that at its first stages outperforms even the fastest silicon transistor. Interesting read that gives ideas about where the computer industry is heading in the next few years."
Used more than three-hundred hours hoses your data
With the inherent limits imposed upon the current silicon chips, gallium arsenide being so far impractical & expensive it seems nanotechnology is the only way to go if we are going to get faster computers. The Japenese high-tech companies realised this ages ago and ploughed the profits made from silicon chips into nanotechnology research. Now it's finally showing some results.
Video Game cheats, hints a
We have seen many things in the last two years that outperform silicon based transistors. When it becomes cost effective and just plain realistic, thats when I wan't to hear about it. Is there anything cool that we might actually be using in 5 years?
Hell, people I work with built a batch last year iirc.
Is IBM actually doing something new in the way of making them practical for large scale or better integration?
I always wondered if the law was right, because we just keep putting more and more people on the task of making the machines faster. There are a lot more people working on making computers faster now then when he said that.
;)
On the other hand, software has a way of becoming so abstract as to ensure that computers will always need to get faster.
Since the article is about nanotechnology does it mean that it has to be a small read as well? Dont look for anything concerning this issue for the next 5 years.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
it just doesn't have quite the ring that "Silicon Valley" has, does it?
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Implant some nanotubes here and there, and we /. might live up to the second half of their motto:"Stuff that matters".
This is "News for Nerds" but its not "Stuff that matters". So maybe nanotech can aleast give the posters here the capability of ensuring that articles post meet both requirements the majority of time.
Carbon will be geek's best friend.
Dodge this !! --Trinity, The Matrix
It seems like that (a) every month someone has a new nanotube device, (b) it's always coming out of IBM, (c) no indication how they are going to economically integrate it with existing components. This is the wave of the future, I guess, but it will probably be after Si CMOS has run its course (5-15 years, depending on who you talk to). There's a lot that can be done with alloying Ge into Si, but I think right now most of that's aimed at the microwave communications market. If it is shown to be capable of making quantum computers, though, it probably will get more research money because it is very similar to existing technology.
"The carbon nanotube...is the strongest fiber in nature and 10 times stronger than steel."
Faster, more powerful... in the next round of tests perhaps we'll find out it reacts poorly when in the vicinity of kryptonite.
...that the Silicon Valley will one day be called the "Nanotube Valley"?
mund freud.
Can I be looking forward to buying some borg nano probes any time soon?
Hacker Media
The question is, can it be mass produced?
It doesn't matter if its faster or smaller or more efficient or God's gift to computerdom, if it can't deliver x Computers a week to CompUSA.
"Sig free in '03!"
Well, nanocomputingtubularexplodingfromflashbulb stuff seems to be new and exciting every other day.
:p
It could, however, be that companies are struggling to get it working in an actual sellable way.
Which could be good - more power, and such.
However, do these types of thing do anything for heat? Fans and heatsinks are starting to not cut it for processors on *home* computers. I don't know a single person who really thinks watercooling is a good idea (Water + Electronics? It just sounds bad.)
Do we really need more power? Do we need even more bloat when almost every huge power-sucking program could be redone more efficiently in time?
I say we need chips that give off less heat first
or it'll explode.
(It makes a nice video though...)
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
... can be found here.
First of all, nano is e-9, not e-12 like says. Second, the tubes don't carry electric charge on the interiors like a straw. It is carried on the surface--the interior is a vacuum. And fourth, the tubes are nano in length as well, which kind of makes making a ribbon cable moot.
So remember not to use a flash when taking photos of your circuitboards :)
>"The small (size) is of course very important, but it is a little bit overhyped.
>It is really the performance we are after," said Phaedon Avouris,
>manager of nanoscience and nanotechnology for IBM Research.
> 2. Hang a magic marker from a string inside the
> crapper; encourge users to write graffiti
>
A magic marker! That's far too sophisticated for slashbots; they prefer smearing their shit directly on the wall.
Not to take anything away from IBM, but not only have individual nanotube transistors already been done, but they're already being used to produce inttegrated circuits of logic gates in Europe at Delft University of Technology. A paper about their nanotube logic circuitry is here...
IBM keeps developing "fast stuff" that, by the way, has to be refrigierated with liquid helium. Not exactly common at my local 7-11 (will a cold six-pack work?).
And what substrate will they use? How will they build it en masse? These are important questions that this article "failed" to mention [sigh].
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
It seems really strange that I've read this article about 10 times on different sites today, and not once have I seen a frequency listed. The article mentions that it is faster than any silicon transistor, but how much faster exactly?
-- Adam
Calling Moore's law a law is a misnomer. There's no science or math behind it. Moore just made some simple observations, drew a line on a graph, and said "Hey, look at that, doubles every 18 months." There's no fundamental reason for chip development to go at that rate, it's just a trend that we've happened to follow. It could in fact be a self fullfilling prophecy. People expect chips to develop at that rate, so that's what marketing and development shoot for.
These things implode in bright light!
See
Carbon nanotubes ignite when exposed to flash.
Makes my plans for a superstrong nanotube fiber superhero suit go up in smoke. Literally!
Me physicist. Me make rockets.
Ok thats all fine and dandy to say we can now have transistors which will carry on moores law for another x years but there are still physical problems we cannot get roud without rethinking the whole VLSI consept.
In future technology it will take several clock cycles to get a signal at a speed of light from one side of the chip to the other. Its impossible to breat that rule.
Imagine distributing a clock where the destination is 50 cycles ahead and each clock path has to be accurate to within a 10th of a cycle.
Or if one transistor has one atom of impurity it will make a pipeline stage three times slower and basicly make the chip unworkable.
The material to make these circuits out of isnt the biggest problem. Even before silicon runs out of steam we will hit a great big technology wall which requires new ways of thinking.
I beleve asynchronous logic is the answear but thats just me.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
A bit more to say about it
can be found here and the full press release here
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
IBM don't want to get out of the hardware business, they want to get out of the cut-throat hardware business so that means the high volume/low profit commodity PC components business.
For example I highly doubt they sold off the 1" Microdrive to Hitachi.
100,000 thinner than a human hair? Can anyone tell me what that is in nm/pm ?
Currently we are working on a 1,000,000th the size of a cow process to make our chips.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Since the IBM experiments (and others done elsewhere) almost always use single wall carbon nanotubes, there are a few issues of practical nature I wonder about with this technology.
One is that single wall nanotubes are oxygen sensitive. Specifically, contact with O2 will cause single site defects in the nanotube structure, thus causing the whole nanotube to lose its electronic properties. It makes me wonder about how they will package these "molecular transistors" such that O2 can't get to it, but the encapsulation of the nanotube doesn't cause it to short out.
Another is that when these things heat up, they do ignite. As we've seen with the light-based ignition shown in Science and here on slashdot, these materials do burn. The above mentioned oxygen reaction sometimes causes the semi-conducting nanotubes to become insulators, thus they heat up, ignite, and disintegrate. So I'm wondering if frying one's nanotube-based chip would be more than just a figurative term if this happened.
Finally, there is the fabrication issue. I know that in the near future, one can make kilotons of nanotubes, and probably even kilograms of single wall nanotubes today (maybe 2kg a year, but you don't need that much if you only need 1 nanotube), but how are you going to fabricate them into architechures onto chips with existing chip fabrication technology?
Maybe IBM has all this worked out. I do have to remember that what they've published today is what they already have covered in patents and what they've been working on already for several months to one year. They don't publish unless they've got more going on AND if they already have the technology protected.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
IBM announced it has created the highest performing nanotubes transistors to date and has proven that carbon nanotubes -- tube-shaped molecules made of carbon atoms that are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair -- can outperform the leading silicon transistor prototypes available today.
From the MSNBC article:
ARMONK, NEW YORK-BASED IBM said it used a carbon nanotube -- a tiny cylindrical structure made up of carbon atoms that is about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair
So which is it - 100,000 or 50,000 times smaller than a human hair? It seems that there is quite a bit of hype on the MSNBC side of things. Doesn't it bother anyone that MSNBC distorted the truth?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
In addition to looking at using the carbon nanotube, which is the strongest fiber in nature and 10 times stronger than steel, scientists are also studying the possibility of quantum computing based on atoms.
Oh? Silicon computing isn't based on atoms?
It seems that one of the main concerns facing chips today is over heating. How does this new technolgy hold up in this respect?
Is this the first post about Wolfram on a topic not about Wolfram... and is this going to continue. That reminds me: How about a Beowulf Cluster of these things. :)
What about Geek Girls?
Would a Geek Girl's best friend be a diamond-carbon-nanotube or a degraded diamond from which nanotubes could be made?
What about a geek woman? Do they like more mature things, of a less materialistic nature?
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
do they have pictures of this in action?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Watch IBM patent this tech and send it careening towards another MCA-type failure....
-- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
Don't make fun of the reporters. It's not nice. They can't help it if they're stupid.
:-)
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Do not click on that link with automatic downloading of DLLs or Active-X controls enabled.
I was surprised to see hostile code from a supposedly respectable news organization. There's no contractual relationship or EULA which could possibly justify this. In California, this is a criminal offense. California law is tougher on computer viruses and related hostile code than other states.
Here's the relevant Calfornia law:
"502. (a) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this section to expand the degree of protection afforded to individuals, businesses, and governmental agencies from tampering, interference, damage, and unauthorized access to lawfully created computer data and computer systems." ...
-
(4) Knowingly accesses and without permission adds, alters,
damages, deletes, or destroys any data, computer software, or
computer programs which reside or exist internal or external to a
computer, computer system, or computer network.
- (5) Knowingly and without permission disrupts or causes the
disruption of computer services or denies or causes the denial of
computer services to an authorized user of a computer, computer
system, or computer network.
- (6) Knowingly and without permission provides or assists in
providing a means of accessing a computer, computer system, or
computer network in violation of this section.
- (7) Knowingly and without permission accesses or causes to be
accessed any computer, computer system, or computer network.
-
(8) Knowingly introduces any computer contaminant into any
computer, computer system, or computer network.
That seems to cover it.I have filed a complaint with the Office of the California Attorney General in this matter.
The highest end RAM chips have 100-500 million gates on them and sell for a few dollars. No other technology approaches this cost effectiveness.
I'm only going to tell you morons this one more time!
The second law of thermodynamics is an empirical law. It is based upon observations, with no theory backing it up. It's like watching traffic and saying "of the last 100 cars, 20 of them were blue, ergo, 20% of all cars are blue".
So I don't want you losers trotting out that little bit of 19th century superstition when trying to explain why that "anomolous heat" can't possibly exist, hence these fine upstanding chemists are obivious frauds who lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
If you yoyos weren't so busy burying your heads in the sand, you'd have the time to take an honest look at the data and do your own damn experiments to prove or disprove the matter once and for all. Instead you engage in ad hominem attacks rather than doing real science.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I've heard of the company this guy works for. Their products are a load of crap.
Why can't nerds tell Christmas from Halloween?
Because 25(hex) == 31(dec)!!!!
[*] or is this the greatest troll of all time?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Why is six scared?
Because 5, 4, 3!
Can be found here
Remember Lexington Green!
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
(This post is certified by me, Anonymous Coward, to be a 100% authentic beowulf cluster troll. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES OR IMPOSTERS!)
CNET version of the same article.
An interesting quote from the article...
The small (size) is of course very important, but it is a little bit overhyped. It is really the performance we are after," said Phaedon Avouris, manager of nanoscience and nanotechnology for IBM Research.
Who says size doesn't matter? As long as the electrons are satisfied!
-ez
At 10 times stronger than steel, and with obsolescence for your PC hardware heading your way in about 3 years, just how hard of a hit is this new technology going to have on landfills?
Trash compactors breaking?
Reusability/decay?
Let's also remember it was 30 years between Disney's use of microwave ovens in The World of The Future and the reality in real homes.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
Really, is it so far fetched? How far off until a chip is capable of processing and sorting information quickly enough to accomodate some real brute-force AI?
Then again, I'm probably over-simplifying the issueby thinking it's raw speed that a true thinking machine needs.
That's what I was trying to say, just not as well as you have.
Moore's 'LAW' probably is a self fullfilling prophecy, and someday as all the naysayers state, it will not come true.
However, I believe that when that day comes, and the hardware can't be made any faster, then the software will just get more efficient to make the hardware SEEM faster.
The Raven
The Raven
As Nitrozac predicted all along......
s to re/tubesrock.html
http://www.geekculture.com/geekculturestore/web
That's from After Y2K which is still going at:
www.nitrozac.com
That would be a nice feature. Anybody know?
Sure, you're not likely to be using this stuff for a while. But don't you find this interesting anyway, both from the perspective of "what's gonna happen when conventional silicon technologies run out in a decade" (if that's indeed going to happen as it seems), and "hey, that's really cool, regardless of whether it's practical or not"?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Right. It's not a "law" - it's Intel's marketing plan. Even in today's corporate world, there's still a difference.
can be found here
sulli
RTFJ.
Oh crap... I forgot to sign in as anonymous... oops.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Ya know, they would, but the source isn't available. Sorry, try again.
It's actually a internal Microsoft program they use to reder ads on MSN/MSNBC sites.
Somehow MSNBC must have messed up and the file was available to download instead of executing on the server. (Stupid mistake when when executable permissions are not set for a file.)