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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?
Can you imagine what Chicken Run 2 will look like?
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.
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)
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. (Unlike turkeys.)
I hate to disappoint you, but...Turkeys can fly. In the wild turkeys actually roost in trees.
...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
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.
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.
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?
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
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
Fly!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
...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
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.
"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.
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!
You think actual people moderate this stuff? Formula to get +1 funny: Step 1) Post within 15 minutes of the story. Step 2) Topic is "XXXXX ...."
Step 3) Compair story to popular culture
Step 4)
Step 5) Profit!
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.
The funny thing is that the out-of-state students here at University of Delaware often won't believe this. But once they've had a few years here, they start to understand ;)
My PC is finger-licking good!
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
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."
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.
These Chicken-Feather chips are just a fad.
Thanks to a recent court ruling, they are now able to just call it chicken again. And it's not just at KFC anymore.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
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!