Lightning Rods for Nanoelectronics

dcunning writes "Over the last several years (in my short view) there has been a fairly constant hum as to whether or not processors will continue to be able to keep up with Moore's law. Usually this question (and the arguments answering it) is phrased in terms of the ability to continue to shrink transistors/wires/etc. and escape such things as electron tunneling, etc. Scientific American has an interesting article titled Lightning Rods for Nanoelectronics discussing the how's and what's of another issue: handling electrostatic charges as devices become smaller (and hence more sensitive to both the shock and the resultant heat.) After all, being able to build a 100GHz chip is useless if merely breathing on it will fry its circuitry."

Comments

insulation

[anotherone]

being able to build a 100GHz chip is useless if merely breathing on it will fry its circuitry.

Why? Couldn't you put it in a glass ball or something rather than a standard PGA type chip? A non-conductive oil bath maybe?

Re:insulation

[Gerry Gleason]

The article also makes the point about handling during manufacture. Yes, you can control that environment better than the use environment, but you still have to have a way to deal with it.

Actually, I was confused at first and thought this was about nano-technology, not nanometer scale integrated circuits. At some point, I would expect a major technology shift away from electrical circuits toward something else. After all, cells and neurons don't have these problems. The problem comes from having all those tiny and very long metal interconnects.

Performance/Price

[e8johan]

It is all about how much performance per dollar you can deliver. If you only get a 50% yeild from your processes since the chip can't take the real world, you probably get a bad ratio.

There have been a similar discussion concering clock frequencies earlier today, and I'd say that the same arguments work here too.

Not frightened yet

[plover]

C'mon, people. It's like the corollary to Moore's Law: Every eighteen months, someone has to publish an article why Moore's law will halt the progress of processor development in the next eighteen months.

I remember reading once why they'd never be able to break the 25MHz barrier. And another bemoaning the fact that we'd never be able to produce submicron traces.

While I know it won't be me, there will be some clever person somewhere who will wave their magic wand (figuratively) and dissipate static electricity problems. I refuse to believe that the market will let manufacturers STOP hunting for solutions.

Just Get the Mag!

[z84976]

Month after month, I see here on slashdot postings pointing out some thing or another in Scientific American. Just subscribe to the PRINT EDITION and get the same info weeks in ahead of the "fast electronic web version!" This was on the cover of the print edition that came to my house a month ago!

Moore's law & Speed of light

[dfenstrate]

Whats the point of being able to build a 100GHz chip is useless if merely breathing on it will fry its circuitry.

Whats the point of building a circuit so fast that a signal can only go 3mm in a tick? (3.0*10^8 m/s)/100GHz

I know that signal speed is a substantial fraction of lightspeed, so that makes the problem worse- can you make a viable processor that small (3mm)? Wouldn't you have to design it so basically the chip doesn't wait for the previous cycle to finish?

I know 100GHz is just an off-the-cuff example, and I don't know much about processor design, so please enlighten me- it just seems like we're going to have to go completly different routes pretty soon.

and no, I have not read the article.

We Need new Paradigms

[QEDog]

I have seen many posts here that disregard the serious technical limitation imposed by classical computing by just saying 'Engineers will solve it, they always do'. That is like saying that faster than light travel is only an engineering problem. New computing paradigms are needed. Most predictions says that most of us will witness Moore's Law fail due to quantum mechanical and thermodynamical reasons. Instead of blindly pretending that the engineers will magically solve the problem it would be more proactive to start learning more about the prospects the next generation of technologies. We need to think, not to hope for something magical to happen.

Re:Evil ESD

[Vinnie_333]

Another thing to keep in mind, is that ESD issues are not the same the world over. Because of different climates, some areas of the world are virtually immune to ESD. Unfortunately, these are regions of the world were we are having our sensitive circuits borads designed and built. They don't even understand our concern over ESD! When these parts are used in the USA, they get fried relatively easily.