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Chicken-Feather Chips
gtaylor writes "The Washington Post reports that University of Delaware chemical engineer proposes to replace silicon with chicken feather composites -- since the feathers apparently make the electrons fly. (Unlike turkeys.)"
April 1st was months back. What nonsense is this?
The whole point of using silicon is it's semiconducting capabilities. You just don't get that from 'chicken feathers'.
Would you like your Pentium in Original or Extra Crispy?
It'll add a whole new dimension to pr0n ;)
Warning: May contain nuts
Can you imagine what Chicken Run 2 will look like?
Thunderchicken (a new processor from AMD) 1700 million clucks per second !! yuck yuck yuck
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Too bad they just genetically engineered featherless chickens.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2 000000/2000003.stm
Doh!
KFC and IBM, anyone? I'm sure that KFC has a surplus of feathers.
Or maybe, just rename to Kentucy Fried Computers?
But then, it could cause problems.
I, for one, could see a clash between computer makers and pillow makers.
And do we really need the trouble that the animal rights protestors would cause?
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
Hmm, given that most of the DelMarVa (Delaware Maryland Virginia) peninsula is owned by either Dow Chemical or Perdue this makes perfect sense ;).
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
Sure guys, that's a good explanation for all the chickens at the geek compound.
Mc Donalds recently replaced the chicken burger by an artificial silicon-based meat substitute.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
...because that's about all Delaware produces, besides Extacy...
These signals travel faster in the presence of some materials than others. Air, for instance, allows the fastest movement of all, because it provides essentially no resistance. When traveling near solids, however, the movement tends to kick up opposing positive charges. These charges can distract the signal from completing its appointed rounds.
So what are they saying? Air offers no electrical resistance? Last I heard, air was one of the best insulators around. Or did they perchance confuse resistance with the dielectric value?
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Chicken feathers? This sounds funny and thats whut it just is, FUNNY. This is not ever going to be implemented (sp?) of my name isnt... uhh... give me a second...
Everyday You see me is the worst day of my life -Office Space
Heh heh.
Wouldn't it be ironic if this "conversion" happened and groups like PETA wanted to create flyers, newsletters, etc. to "stop the exploitation of chickens" -- but they couldn't because all of the computers were made from chickens?
--Gaz"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
"since the feathers apparently make the electrons fly."
-Chickens don't even fly. This is bunk.
HURD - Hurd's Under Research & Development
since the feathers apparently make the electrons fly. (Unlike turkeys.)
I hate to disappoint you, but...Turkeys can fly. In the wild turkeys actually roost in trees.
Dark Helmet: "What are you, Colonel Sanders, chicken?"
Thank you for calling KFC, would you like your chicken fried or digitized?
Tyson Thunderbird 1700 - The power of 1700 Chickens in your ATX Formfactor
I'm sure there will be more to come...
-1: Jokebait
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
...if this technique could be used with any kind of bird plumage, it would mean that Google is well-positioned to save a great deal of money on hardware...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
And if you overclock.. You get :
FRIED CHICKEN
HA HA HA
Why not just use Britney Spears? I think she has a lot of silicon. Or was that silica?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
I was just getting worried about this "The Earth will expire in 50 years" scare... So glad we've found a way to curtail the shortage of sand!
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: AMD was offering more $$$ for feathers. A husband comes home from work to find burnt chicken sitting on his dinner plate. He asks his wife about it. Wife: "I thought you said over cook the chicken" Husband: "No, I said over CLOCK the chicken." Must be the static.
Have you ever smelled burnt chicken feathers? :p
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
This article is very poorly written... lots of technical errors. As a professional in the semiconductor industry, I'm having trouble envisioning how this guy could actually replace silicon with chicken feathers.
For one thing, they seem to talking about the dielectric constant of the materials. For chips, a low dielectric constant material between the metal lines is good, because it reduces the RC time delay. That's why you might have heard all the buzz about low-K dielectrics. But these are state-of-the art nanoporous materials that are designed for good deposition, thickness control, and etchability... I just can't see how you could do the same with chicken feathers.
As for replacing the silicon itself? No way. Silicon is a unique material with semiconducting properties, meaning you can change its resistance by added small controlled amounts of dopant atoms. It can be made in large single crystal ingots with very low defect and impurity level. How in the world could you replace a single crystal with chicken feathers??? Hell, the fibers alone are 100's of times bigger than current gate widths.
Me remains a bit skeptical.
But if we could make boards out of the stuff that feathers are made out of, wouldn't it be easy to just "grow" the feather material the way we want it to come out?
If this has any basis in truth, then this sounds like a worthwhile little experiment to me.
-Montag
Google has already demonstrated that pigeons are far more effective than chickens.
As the University of Delaware investigates chicken-wing chips, a hobbyist in Alberta, Canada is converting old barbeque components into a computer. He is applying for a whimsical patent for his "barbeque chips."
Meanwhile, unsubstantiated rumours abound that in Britain, researchers are using scales from north atlantic cod in a new technology they are calling "fish'n chips."
Okay, no more silly jokes.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
I bet the price of chicken mcnuggets will go up because of this.
The idea of using natural and waste materials in other ways is not new. Henry Ford grew soybeans around his Dearborn, Mich., headquarters, Wool notes, to find a variety he could use to fabricate auto parts.
Now if only we could find some use for all those AOL disks.
Is that they will run a Chicken Shit Operating System.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
An overclocked Rhode island red for that massively paralleled computing power!
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
Wool's team took chicken feathers and plant oils and molded them into a composite material that approximates the shape and feel of silicon.
Wouldn't "approximates the electrical characteristics of silicon" be better then just making a silicon substitute that looks and feels like silicon?
When the researchers tested it for speed, they found that the composite allowed movement at about twice the rate of silicon. Though that's still slower than the speed in air, Wool said, "I was jumping up and down."
It doesn't sound like they actually created a gate. Isn't creating something that conducts electricty a far cry from creating something that can actually be used as a gate in a circuit?
And finally. Why does it sound like this guy is wasting the tax payers money?
Man, can you imagine a beowolf flock of these?
Okay.... let's go over this clearly.
Source for info on what Air and Silicon is: MIT
Air is an insulator with incredibly high resistivity
Pure Silicon is a semiconductor with reasonable resistivity
Now if we introduce air bubbles into Pure silicon or chicken feathers. We introduce resistivity. Which is the number one thing, we _don't_ want in an electrical circuit (especially a small one) because resistance = heat = melting wires.
Sure, electromagnetic _waves_ travel faster through air, but electrons don't travel at all through the air, that's why we aren't being electricuted on a daily basis.
I really think the writer of this article needs to hire a science advisor so he understands basic current electrics.
~ kjrose
Horse Feathers! They run faster.
Hmm... Bird feathers evolved from scales. So wouldn't the scale-ability factor be better for use in your Beowulf Cluster? Would you rename BC to a Family Bucket?
Heh, just as they're working on featherless chickens...maybe it's all a big conspiracy.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
wait 'til PETA gets ahold of this one
Which came first, the feather or the silicon?
Join the TWIT army now!
So, in the futur, we could see the Googles pigeon ranking system
running on chicken feather CPU, using RFC 1149 in conjunction with the BIRD Internet Routing Daemon for communications...
Now, this could help all those rednecks to enter the new millenium!
Anyway, they are already on the move, learning from all the successfull IT companies out there...
I'd rather be sailing...
'Silicon, once thought be simply the main material in the construction of microchips, has been discovered to be one of the 11 secret spices in Kentucky Fried Chicken.'
'KFC recent press release states that "Every piece of delicious KFC, has essential minerals."'
oh please may the cluck cluck jokes never end....
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Fly!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
"Air, for instance, allows the fastest movement of all, because it provides essentially no resistance."
I'll fill shoe boxes with superconducting air and sell a bunch of supercomputing VAPORWARE!
"I'll have a witty
The 8 billion chickens killed each year in the USA alone present major environmental problems. While animal by-products can already be found in many unexpected places (film, rubber, etc), I find it odd that a scientist who has such a focus on finding environmentally sound solutions is looking at the poultry industry as a source of raw materials...
Darn editors! /. is at it again. You guys accidentally put the hardware icon in the story instead of the foot...
Are we running out of sand?!??!
01100101 01111001 01100101 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110010
...and I saw a beowulf cluster of chickens.
Alright, I deserve to get modded down for that.
computer 1 to computer 2: Chicken! computer 2 to computer 1: Turkey!
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
maybe they found a nugget!
Terrible article, no mention of whether or not the chicken feather composite is even a semiconductor! Just nebulus and confusing statements about the speed of electrons in his stuff.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
And once they process the feathers down to a point where they'll be able to get decent transistor densities, what will happen? The air will all be processed out.
I suspect that there will be none of the mythical speed-enhancing air other than what's being blown up our collective butts.
Sounds like someone is hoping to get some research grants to me.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
What? Is that meant to be funny? It doesn't even make any sense. Did the moderators have a job lot of funny points?
Please mod it 'overrated' or explain what the joke is. Thanks.
As a native Delawarean, I'd like to inform everyone that there are actually more chickens in delaware then people!
Anyway also good to see a former prof, quoted in the Article.. (I'm a VT alum)
At first glance I thought some
Then I got a clue.
You see? Just weeks after the featherless chicken is achieved, science finds a use for the feathers. You never know what wonderous breakthough you're inadvertently breeding out of existence.
The reason silicon is used for integrated circuit chips is because it's a semiconductor - a material that can conduct or insulate depending on the electrical conditions around it. Chicken feathers do not semiconduct.
As for electric signals travelling best through air... would you rather be standing ten feet from a power line, or reaching out with a metal fishing rod to touch it?
As far as I can tell, the discussion seems to be a garbled description of using organic fibers/composites as a dielectric (insulating) material instead of oxides or nitrides. Much research has been done over the past several years looking for "low-K dielectrics". The "K" parameter is a measure of how an insulator interacts with an electric field imposed on it. A high-K material has more capacitance when you put a voltage across it; low-k materials for bulk insulators reduce the capacitance between wires (and between wires and the substrate). This reduces wire delays.
An attractive area of research has been to put voids (bubbles or pores) into the dielectric material. Because gases tend to have low dielectric constants, introducing gas-filled voids in the dielectric will reduce the capacitance that two wires insulated by the dielectric will feel. This is what the "microbubbles" comment in the article refers to.
I guess this guy wants to grind up chicken feathers and paste them on to a wafer instead of growing an oxide. Among other things, he'll need to remove all particles larger than a few tens of nanometres for this to not introduce defects in the chip. Good luck.
They said that the new 'Camilla' processor will be out in q4 of 2002.
What a load of blox
" These signals travel faster in the presence of some materials than others. Air, for instance, allows the fastest movement of all, because it provides essentially no resistance. When traveling near solids, however, the movement tends to kick up opposing positive charges. These charges can distract the signal from completing its appointed rounds.
Though these signals move more slowly in the presence of silicon than they do in air, silicon offers less resistance than many other materials do. That's why it has been used in microchips for so long. But engineers are always looking for ways to turbocharge their chips. Historically, they have been able to do this by inscribing more transistors into ever-tinier spaces. But some worry that a physical limit may be approaching. "
SFAIK, this is shit. Silicon is good because it produces the second hightest number of compounds (carbon comes tops) and it's metalic, SFA to do with risistance. copper/gold and diamond have less resistance?
Mr wool and his wooly ideas!
Next he'll inject sheep so that they shead there flease.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
But the guy gets major props for coming up with this. It sounds like he has several good ideas that are similar for other industries.
Hmm, I wonder if vegans would use computers with chips made out of chicken feathers...
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Is there a worldwide shortage in sand? The stuff cannot by found anymore so we need a replacement...
--- Worst tagline ever.
eom
"In the end, the only thing private industry is interested in is making money, so the question is whether systems he's developing will be cost-competitive with the systems they're replacing," said the Energy Department's Paster.
Unfortunately, simply using the simplest or cheapest or least-polluting material doesn't add up to making the greatest amount of money. Control does. That's why cheap hemp was replaced by petrochemicals, why trolley systems died in favor of cars, and why Microsoft hates any standard not under their control.
When AMD gets their claws into this new cip they will have to rename their chipset from ThunderBird to ThunderChicken... Now instead of calling it overclocking, we'll call it Choking the Chicken. :P
Instead of the main board beeping at you when you boot, it'll crow.... real LOUD!
Now when you claim to be a chicken farmer, you are not being derogatory cuz you ARE running a large array of chickens!
The worse part of this is that it might make some folks allergic to chickens break out in hives... Boy i can see it now: "Employee with chicken allergies sues company for $10 million for allergic reactions from his workstation."
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
A versitile little bird. Mean and stinky though.
You know they're heating UGA with chicken bi-products too.
The science of agricultural waste may be an open target for easy jokes, but give these guys credit for finding alternative uses for a major and often overlooked pollutant.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these!
I ain't no exbert here, but I reckon this article be a few coyotes short of a full pack. Ain't there somethin more to this silicone than how fast dem darn electrodes move a through it? Sure light is important, but don't a man want some substance to his bobblin? Shakin a bag a feathers don't do me no good, no matter how fast I can shake em.
I'm too chicken to try overclocking it.
wait-wait--
Why did the pentium 7 cross the road?
no-
It brings life back to the AMD ThunderBIRD.
hold on!
My computer keeps locking up! I'm gonna WRING it's NECK!
or
Gizzards Inside(TM)!!!
Sheesh.
Frankly, I'm convinced that this story was concocted simply because the "funny" mod has been apparently underused in the past weeks.
My PC is finger-licking good!
Ever notice that in most Sci-Fi flicks when you see the insides of an alien spacecraft that everything seems alive, slimy, green, or something? Now those aliens can behold our feather technology.
"The dashboard is laden with the beaks of a thousand Eagles" -- Futurama, Victor the car salesman
...I really don't think this idea will fly with me.
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
Does anybody remember Ross Perot's "chicken technology" chart? Maybe Arkansas will be the new center for world technolgy!
either original or extra crispy depending on which one is ... [cheep!] [cheep!] [cheep!]
I just put all this work into growing my featherless chickens and damnit now it turns out that features are worth something!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
I thought turkeys could fly.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Hey dudes, I responded to this guy's post, but I'm the one who got modded up. I think the actual +1 Funny should go to him instead of me.
Cheers
"Derp de derp."
The only important fact in this entire sensationalized media drivle is this:
"...other alternatives may also exist. Wool said researchers have been trying to introduce "micro-bubbles" into silicon to achieve the same effect as his chicken feathers (COMPOSITE)."
To get away from Richard Wool!!!
There's no place like ~/
Fabrikate mor Chikin
Chikin Inside
Bush should have died, not Reagan -- Morrissey
Morrissey rides a cockhorse -- The Warlock Pinchers
the timing for this article was funny.
check out the fortune I got just this morning:
SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT
Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth
ABSTRACT
Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying
the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem
of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas
of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi-
bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size
pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that
there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program
to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable
functions.
This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar.
This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues.
Refreshments will be served. Music will be played.
A woman living in Salem Massachusetts claims to have invented an environmentally friendly replacement to the propellant used in the shuttles solid rocket boosters. The replacement uses such exotic ingredients as eye of newt, skin of toad and bile of puffer fish to create a substance that looks and feels like the current propellant that is used. It's still too early to tell how well the new fuel will perform in the real world but researchers are hopeful it will be powering the shuttle within the next couple of years.
Not processors! what the hell are you thinking.
Someone please tell Colonel Sanders to go back to kentucky and think up another new recipe.
I might be a skeptic, but I believe that the job of a chicken processor isn't computing, but plucking feathers.
It's all good.
Don't they know anything about physics?
It?s hard to talk about this article without cursing!
They have confused speed of electrons with (RF) radio signals; they don?t know a thing about impedance or resistance.
1.) A vacuum is the fastest medium for signals to pass through does that mean using their logic we should be using vacuum tubes!
2.) Silicon was chosen because it is a semiconductor and we can make transistors with it.
3.) You would never be able to do very small integrated circuits on chicken feathers because it?s not homogeneous, meaning consistently the same material across a small area, it?s full of inconsistencies. Silicon is grown in crystals that form an almost perfect lattice down to the atomic scale. Any imperfections in the crystal make it unusable.
4.) Chicken feathers are dirty.
5.) Chicken feathers don?t conduct electricity they are in insulator!
6.) Who ever would publish this article in the press doesn?t deserve to be working near anything with a keyboard or even a telephone.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
I can't believe that this is happening in the University of Delaware. Now, Perdue, that's another story!
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. -Thackeray, William
Of course with this new technology will come the standard moral debate over animal rights. Dell and Compaq will embrace it, offering their animal-byproduct computers, while Gateway will cater to the hippie-techies by offering guaranteed vegan computers made with real silicon. Vegan musicians like Moby will use Microsoft's new rights-management facilities to allow only vegan computers to play their music. And Intel will make headlines with it's buyout of Purdue foods.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
Then The Washington Post reminds me: Sometimes even professionial editors let humdingers through.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Buck, buck, buck!
Are vegetarians allowed to use these computers?
I think using real chicken feathers would run into religious issues. Several world-wide religions eschew the consumption and uses of animals in such a manner. While not an issue in the West (cept for vegans and vegetarians), Hindus, Buddhists in the east might cause problems.
General Motors and other foundaries are already using waste from animal slaughter for casting metal parts. For more information, check out GMBond
A major reason most chips use Si is because it's easy to from silicon oxide on its surface. The oxide:
--Has excellent insulating qualities (high resistivity, low dissipation factor)
--Can be chemically etched away without damaging the underlying Si, which means...
--It makes a good mask for for diffusion processing.
--Provides environmental protection (passivation)
Compared to this the substitute is something you shovel off the floor of a chicken coop (literally and figuratively)!
There are more chickens in Northwest Arkansas than there are people that live east of the Mississippi River. I guess Fayetteville would become the new Silicon Valley--of course, we'd have to call it Chicken Hill, or Cluck Central, or something. Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters of the World's Largest Corporation, is very near Fayetteville, so if the 'Chicken Chips' really take off, the one-two combo of Wal-Mart and Chicken Transistors could revolutionize the Arkansas economy.
On a totally unrelated note, the hairiest toes I ever saw on a woman was in Arkansas. True story.
... a battery farm of these?
Hopefully animal rights activists don't get a hold of this story...I can see the protests aganist 'Chicken Feather' microchips..:-)
These Chicken-Feather chips are just a fad.
They refer to AIR throughout the article as if the air around us were some unique element on the periodic table.
Are their experiments with Oxygen? Nitrogen? Helium? Hydrogen?
This article really doesn't explain anything, and I'm wondering if their chips aren't the only things full of air.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Um, the reporter's grasp of the situation is kinda tenuous. Apparently they are talking about the properties of air, and of undoped silicon, as a DIELECTRIC (i.e. an insulator). Air is indeed "faster" than silicon since air has a lower dielectric constant. However, this is not the dominant problem in high speed chip design -- not by a long shot. The fact that this research weenie is even talking about it, means that his own depth of understanding is puny indeed.
Here's a little secret: as good as air is, pure vacuum is even better. Why don't we make chips out of a pure vacuum? THAT'D be really neato and you don't even need chickens.
Keine eier
Given the number of technical errors in the article, do you suppose that they are talking about replacing circuit board fiberglass with a lower dielectric chicken feather composite?
That would seem a to make a lot more sense. Maybe the researcher was using porous semiconductors as an analogy and the reporter just didn't have any clue what he was talking about.
"Mmmm...chicken-feather chips" *drool*
imagine a beowulf "flock" of these things...
Sounds kind of lame to me. I'd like to see if they can make this turkey fly.
Avi
The parent post here recieved a 'Flamebait' moderation.
Let's be serious, the only flames my comment would bring would be from the grill. (Maybe it was a sarcastic moderation?)
This is definitely one of the silliest mods I've ever recieved.
As many people have already mentioned, the science behind the article sounds like the author took one or two facts about electricity and intuited all the rest. It's almost hard to fault society for being so scientifically illiterate when popular news outlets routinely over-simplify or outright botch science stories.
The first thing I wondered, though, was why the inventor is so set on large circuit designs. Shouldn't he bother to try making a simple transistor out of his magic material first? It'd be much simpler, and would prove his concept.
-Denor
Stories are read,
Even when blue,
Though this one is brain-dead,
And most certainly not true.
Have you read my journal today?
And you thought you'd never see geeks going for some chicks to get them naked.
Chicken Plucking Unit?
Ironically, the guy who came up with this is named "Wool"...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Silicon is one of the most abundant resource on Earth, why would you be looking for a replacment? Sounds kinda screwy to me. If the industry is going to change it will probabally go towards GaAs or Ge, not Chicken Feathers.
Si is used in microchip production for reasons
other than it's dielectric constant. Crystalline Si has some unique eletrical properties, particularly when doped with boron (p-type), phosphorus (n-type), etc. which are necessary to produce transistors. I doubt these properties exist in the composite created by these scientists. Note:It is SiO2, which has a dielectric constant of 4, that forms the dielectric between the aluminum or copper wires on most Si microchips.
So, if the critical quality is lack of substance, the ultimate chip material is... horsefeathers.
will be point and cluck
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
ugh. this is exactly what we need, chickens being turned into computers. do you realize how fucked up this is? now i need to find out where my computer is made and make sure it isn't made of fucking chickens?
Nope, it's not April 1st.
Wonder if Col. Sanders is going to use his secret blend of herbs and spices on them ???
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5