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?

Evil ESD

[resonance]

This is a really important consideration. Most people don't even know how sensitive modern electronics are to ESD. Heck, you don't even have to TOUCH something to fry it these days, the electric field itself can be strong enough to zap cmos devices.

Taking a training class on ESD control was a real eye-opener; seeing it demonstrated before my eyes drove home the point that ESD safety precautions are CRITICAL when working on stuff.

Since taking that class, we have implemented an ANSI 20.20 compliant service bay for PC hardware, and requested that all our distributors ship us parts manufacturer-sealed (they used to 'test' motherboards before they sent them to us). We have reduced our number of returns from customers immensely since then.

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.

Time for decentralization and clockless chips.

[wackybrit]

Slashdot covered clockless chips briefly a few months ago. Why do they make sense? To learn why, let's compare computers to real life industry.

In the 1800s, industry was limited to a few very large factories and workplaces. Over time, these factories became bigger and bigger and faster and faster, until eventually it became impractical to make everything in one place. So.. things were decentralized. Now when your car is built, the raw materials come from Brazil, the parts are made in Taiwan, then the cars are built in America.

Processors are headed the same way. Things are becoming decentralized, and the load on the processor should, therefore, go down. The giant leaps and bounds with video cards have actually caused CPUs to have less work to do. No longer do CPUs have to do nasty 3D calculations.. the video cards do it!

Clockless chips work very well in decentralized situations, since they operate based on incoming data, rather than to a clock. This means thousands of non-standard components can work together to produce the same result as one CPU.

Even -car- engines are becoming decentralized now with specialist automatic gearboxes, electric backup motors, and psuedo-petrol engines in the Prius and Insight. With processors it makes even more sense.

References:

Business 2.0 article on Clockless Computing

Economist article on Asynchronous/Clockless chips.

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.