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NASA Wires Chips With Nanotubes
carstene writes "SpaceDaily reports that NASA has come up with a way to wire microchips with nanotubes instead of copper interconnects. Aparently this could keep Moore's law a reality well into the next decade."
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Heil Saddam!
Interesting but like, show me the chips.
You'll have that sometimes...
with the money NASA can get off the patents for these, the space program may indeed have a future! :)
Thine space is so big, and my nanotubes so small...
Just wondering - but how much would NASA have spent to find this out? I mean It's common to see companies like IBM come up with stuff that is cool like this (like the copper idea a few years back). It seems to me that Intel doesn't actually come up with too many new ideas? (I mean sure there chips become faster but not amazing new things).
I could be wrong. Has Intel done anything this cool? Surely they would spend more money on R&D for processors (I would assume NASA spends more on Space?)
any info about this would be much appreciated.
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What interested me more, was that at the bottom of the article, it mentions that we have quantum entanglement of 3 electrons working. I don't know what will be more useful to continue Moore's Law, the nanotubes or the quantum computers. The nanotubes seem to be an evolutionary upgrade where the quantum computers seem to be more revolutionary.
Now Mr. Bowman is supposed to pull Hal's nanotube? That's a bit hard.
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by Anonymous Coward
(1) Heidi Klum
(2) Toni Braxton
(3) The Asian chick with the big hooters that lives 1 floor down (she said 'hi' to me once)
(4) Mariah Carey
(5) Jamie the Slashdot editor
(6) Sarah Michelle Gellar
(7) Janet Jackson
(8) Carmen Electra
(9) Shania Twain
(10) My 8th grade English teacher
(11) Katie Holmes
(12) Jenna Jameson
(13) The blonde intern with the sweet ass that sits 3 cubes down and 2 to the left
(14) That hot Asian KC Chief's cheerleader
(15) The new, meatier Anna-Nicole Smith (as seen on TV)
(16) Tiffani-Amber Thiessen
(17) Samantha Fox (but still alive)
(18) Kiran Chetry from FoxNews
(19) Alyssa Milano
(20) Juliette Huddy from FoxNews
oddly enough, for more in depth information, check out the recorded answers they provide for integration into radio broadcasts.
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The article doesn't say - it just says "better", but does anybody have any idea how good conductores these nanotubes are?
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Why don't NASA use their very limited amount of money for something acutally useful to Space travel.
My one goal in life is to blow a load across that girl's forehead.
I thought 'she' was a 'he'... pictures please!
Will i need a special Linux distribution for this?
Okay everybody you can LOOK at my new CPU, but what every you do, DON'T TAKE A PICTURE!!!
....shit....
*flash*
**POP**
:)
I thought that was some government-sponsored gay club that manufactured giant phallus symbols?
Now if they can just stop their shuttles from exploding.
- there are very few companies who are geared for this kind of manufacturing since everyone so far has been using copper for the past umpteen years
- changing over to this kind of manufacturing will be a massive capital investment for a company, especially the companies in the East (asia not new york) where are a lot of these chips/boards are made
- there are AFAIK no companies that make nanotubes in sufficient quantity and quality to feed the demand for the tubes at the moment
- unless you are a gamer home computers are more than fast enough now for what we want (internet/email/minor word processing) this kind of tech will only benefit the "Power User" community..
that said i should add that this is a pretty cool tech.. and i hope it works out.. after allSuchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
...and I respect that. Especially Heidi Klum and Katie Holmes. You know your women.
HOWEVER, you forgot the #1 slashdot hottie of ALL time - Natalie Portman.
Negative marks for that omission.
Also, what's up with the NEW Anna-Nicole Smith? She's got a 100 lbs for each name. Kinda weird.
I for one am confident that the media and marketing people will be sufficiently creative to keep people believing in the Moores law myth well into the 23rd century.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
this kind of tech will only benefit the "Power User" community
That sounds kinda familiar... it gets said every time something new comes out. 2 years later, everyone has it.
I think it was discovered at RPI.
AFAIK Oxygen is necessary for this combustion to take place, so your chips would be safe.
But in the end nobody really knows.
p.s. this has serious implications on the space-elevator, if y'all havn't thought about it already. =)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I read it "NASA Wires Chimps With Nanotubes"
The life of the silicon chip industry may last 10 or more years longer, thanks to a new manufacturing process developed by NASA scientists.
The novel method, announced in the April 14 issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters, includes use of extremely tiny carbon 'nanotubes' instead of copper conductors to interconnect parts within integrated circuits (ICs). Carbon nanotubes are measured in nanometers, much smaller than today's components.
A nanometer is roughly 10,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair. ICs are very small groups of electronic components made on silicon wafers.
"NASA needs high-performance computing in small packages for future autonomous spacecraft," said Meyya Meyyappan, director of the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA's Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffett Field, Calif., coauthor of the article.
"The bottom line is that computer chips with more layers and smaller components can do more for us. While we are working on carbon nanotube-based chips for long-term needs, we also are indirectly helping industry to keep silicon-based computer chips in use as long as possible," he said.
One advantage of using carbon nanotube interconnects within integrated circuits is that these interconnects have the ability to conduct very high currents, more than a million amperes of current in a one square centimeter area without any deterioration, which seems to be a problem with today's copper interconnects," said Jun Li, lead scientist of the team at ARC that developed the new process.
"Also, there is no need to create deep, narrow trenches on silicon wafers in which to bury copper conductors, a step that also is becoming a problem as components are made smaller and smaller," Li added.
"Our process allows us to use the tiny carbon nanotubes to replace copper to interconnect network layers on silicon chips," Meyyappan said. "We think this new process may well help to sustain the Moore's Law growth curve."
Moore's Law stemmed from an observation made by computer chip pioneer Gordon Moore in 1964 that the number of transistors in a given area of an IC had doubled every year since its invention. Moore predicted the trend would continue at a rate of about 18 months between doublings.
Continuing down this 'doubling' path is becoming increasingly difficult, according to Meyyappan.
"Roadblocks exist in several common technologies such as interconnects, lithography and others currently used to make the chips," he said. "However, I think our new process could be in use by industry for the next generation of ICs, removing some of these roadblocks," Meyyappan added.
"Using the new process, manufacturers will be able to add more cake-like layers of components to silicon chips to increase computer capability," Li said.
Because copper's resistance to electricity flow increases greatly as the metal's dimensions decrease, there is a limit to how small copper conductors can be.
In contrast, extremely tiny carbon nanotubes can substitute for copper conductors in smaller computer chip electronic configurations, because carbon nanotube electrical resistance is not high.
The new process includes 'growing' microscopic, whisker-like carbon nanotubes on the surface of a silicon wafer by means of a chemical process. Researchers deposit a layer of silica over the nanotubes grown on the chip to fill the spaces between the tubes. Then the surface is polished flat.
Scientists can build more multiple, cake-like layers with vertical carbon nanotube 'wires' that can interconnect layers of electronics that make up the chip.
Related LinksNanotechnology at NASA
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
I don't remember nanotubes being excellent conductors (there are not so many free-floating electrons, so resistance is not as low as other materials), however, for the size they can handle a LOT of current. Because the atomic structure is so strong (this also contributes to the tensile strength), large quantities of electrons flowing does not "knock" atoms from their stable positions off, which would cause serious problems (silicon and copper both are exhibiting this troublesome behavior, and will be more problematic as transisters continue to shrink).
However, there has been recent research that suggest carbon compounds (diamond was it?) can be made to superconduct. It was from Africa, methinks? If that was really possible, nanotubes may have hope.
I would personally think the next big thing should be joseph-junction based (SQUID) computers, which would REALLY kick butt. (natural resonance frequency of 500GHz!)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
NASA spends billions of dollars on a failed space station... No wait they already are doing that.
In Soviet Russia, NASA wires nanotubes to YOU!
Maybe Carbon NanoTubes, or CNT... insert a U in there somewhere and I think you might have a marketting no-no.
That's completely untrue. For most of the history of the semiconductor industry, aluminium has been used, because the manufacturing process for copper was much more difficult. Copper has only recently become commonplace.
changing over to this kind of manufacturing will be a massive capital investment for a company, especially the companies in the East (asia not new york) where are a lot of these chips/boards are made
Changing to new manufacturing processes is a fact of life in the semiconductor industry and happens regularly. It always requires massive capital investment, yet somehow, they seem to manage (see above).
there are AFAIK no companies that make nanotubes in sufficient quantity and quality to feed the demand for the tubes at the moment
There are also no companies which manufacture nano scale copper wires for routing layers on ICs. This is because it's not done that way. Once you have a process for growing carbon nano-tubes on chips, you just have make it cost effective - just like any other semiconductor manufacturing technology.
unless you are a gamer home computers are more than fast enough now for what we want (internet/email/minor word processing) this kind of tech will only benefit the "Power User" community..
There's no amount of processing power that the desktop software industry will not be able to squander.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Ahem...
...
People saying "unless you are a gamer home computers are more than fast enough now for what we want (internet/email/minor word processing) " are forgetting that
1 - Starting Word 2024 will require 1.5 TeraFlops because every key you strike will require the calculation of two 8192 bytes key and the exchange of 1024 security tokens / sec, and we have to get ready to cope with that
2 - My old and faithfull Dual PIII 1Ghz, that was once considered the fastest rig on my block is now just a piece of interesting junk that still allows me to play Quake and encode divxs at the same time, and LOTS of you just dream about doing it for real
3 - it's not because i'm not a basic luser that immediatly jump categories and becomes a Power User. And if you think a softcore gamer or a hardcore Quaker is a "Power User", you never saw a real 16 CPU machine being "stability tested" for a round or ten of Quake @1024 fps, or the fastest Divx encode ever (11 minutes 8p)...
4 - "internet/email/minor word processing" can be achieved since 486 DX2 66 with no problem and little fuss... I mean my mail Server/Firewall/Ftp/ Webserver/PDC is a Pentium 133 and it serves the need of 10 ppl...So stop complaining when we allow you the use of a 2 Ghz computer just so you can play Freecell @ 25 fps 8p
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As reported in the April 27 (2001) issue of the journal Science, IBM researchers have built the world's first array of transistors out of carbon nanotubes -- tiny cylinders of carbon atoms that measure about 10 atoms across, are 500 times smaller than today's silicon-based transistors and are 1,000 times stronger than steel. The breakthrough bypasses the slow process of manipulating individual nanotubes one-by-one, and is more suitable for a future manufacturing process. Story is here.
Here's the story. Is this something different? Have I missed the point?
Bob
In Soviet Russia, Snap Supports You!
We can't use nanotech! It'll be toxic and dangerous to breath in!
:(
:(
WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT SNIFF YOUR CHIPS!
So much for enjoying the new computer smell.
Google points to here
Also the interview mentions the fact that in October 2002, it was still in basic research form and could take as much as a couple of years to production and maybe a bit more for commercial purposes.
But that still bodes well for us since Silicon will tide us through another 10 good years.
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More than a million Amps in a cm^2?? If space applications in the future are gonna need currents of a million amps going down a wire that feeds under your vertical bed, I sure as hell won't be an astronaut! :-)
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You'll see her full name: Jamie Hodgkins
What is the editor Jamie's last name?
These guys are looking for 180,000 KM of the stuff, I wonder can the get it here.
Oh and the need a big rock to tie it to as well....
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Just like the microwave, this is just yet another technological advancement made possible by Roswell.
and I'll show you a shrink wrap cardboard tude in 10 years time.
This led to their creation of "pixie dust" which has enabled notebook hard drive capacities to rise. They found unique magnetic properties of "glass" when manipulating compounds on a molecular level.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
... processors are not the bottleneck in any way. They are already so fast that buses, caches and memory have a very hard time to keep up, not speeking about secondary or even tertiary memory at all. That's the real bottleneck these days, the buses to the caches and the caches/memory itself. Most of you know how many processor cycles are lost if some data cannot be pulled out of the cache, but must be pulled out of the memory or even the harddisk (we are speaking about millions of ns's here...).
So I'd like to see some evolutionary/revolutionary inventions in these sectors, rather than making cpu's even faster and making the bottleneck of buses, caches and memories even larger...
Research into totally new technologies like quantum computing will be delayed because of this.
;-)
When chip makers reach the cealing of current technology, only then large amounts of cash and effort will be pumped into totally new technologies.
In other words: this piece of innovation slows down more interresting innovation.
Ack, every up-side has its down-side(s)
couldn't any atom in the valence group do as well? (I'm remembering my old chart of the elements and we could have silicon nanotubes too.)
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at least that is what I think of when I see "NASA." Could this be a small start for them catching a clue and coming out of the bureaucratic pit of incompetence they have been in?
Imagine a railgun made of carbon nanotubes
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
This is fantastic. Is there nothing Tiny Carbon Nano Tubes can not do ? I belive that Tiny Carbon Nano Tubes will change all our lives in ways we can not imagine.
However, intense research of carbon is what led to the discovery of buckyballs and nanotubes. Perhaps there other cool forms of silicon which are yet to be discovered.
On a different topic, how do the NASA researchers propose to connect the nanotubes in a useful way? I can understand growing the tubes on a silicon wafer and filling in the surrounding space, but this just produces a bunch of parallel wires not a designed circuit.
AlpineR
Those nanotubes burned when exposed to bright light, but researchers might find an alternate nanotube structure that doesn't absorb light like that.
So the chips and the space elevator might be ok.
It seems to me that we could extend Moore's Law (observation) for another 7 years just by switching from copper and electron based bit transfer methods to fiber and light based bit transfer. Just like we went from copper telephone wires to fiber. Since electrons only travel at 1/10 the speed of light, we could theoretically have optical computers with FSB speeds of 8ghz! (quad pumped double data rate of course) That could hold us over until quantum computing arrives.
Yes, perhaps they promise less resistance than copper interconnect of the same size, but isn't a diameter of 100nm actually a bit large? Can nanotubes shrink, or is their diameter a chemical requirement? According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, copper wiring pitch should now in 2003 already be 245nm. So with 50% spacing between those nanotubes, you're not even talking a 2x improvement in size over current interconnect. What if the things are too big to be used as interconnect for those 35nm gates we're supposed to see in 2007?
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
I call for an immediate ban on all future use of nanotubes by NASA. I don't care about the "performance increases" they claim. All I care about is the health effects of nanotechnology - this must be banned before it gets out of control!
/. article
-Crazy researcher from other recent
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If you google "nanotube wires" you'll find many doing this in 1999. Then too, both NASA and Slashdot make "discoveries" years later.
Also, as I recall, the major problem with using nanotubes in this way is going to be getting a number of them with similar characteristics. So far, no one's been able to get a good handle on how to really tailor properties finely (length, twist angle, etc).
But one day, perhaps.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Is Jamie McCarthy
SpaceDaily reports that NASA has come up with a way to wire microchips with nanotubes instead of copper interconnects.
In other news, Intel's R&D department announced that mounting heatsink+fan on shuttles' thermal tiles can efficiently disspate heat during reentry into the Earth atmosphere.
Right now, the majority of space on chip is taken up by verious caches. A significant proportion of that space is taken up by wiring. Having much smaller wiring should allow much larger caches. A system with 8Mb on-chip cache (and a well-designed asynchronous algorythm for filling it) would hardly ever wait for the front-side-bus at all.
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False. Most improvements in processor design and fabrication have allowed processors to be made that are faster, smaller, and cheaper. Perhaps there aren't many users who care about faster, but everyone cares about smaller and cheaper.
unless you are a gamer home computers are more than fast enough now for what we want
This won't stay true forever, though.
My PII-400 is about 3 1/2 years old now, two generations old in Moore's Law terms, and it is indeed fast enough for most of what I do.
However.
If I try to play movie files using certain late-model codecs (MPEG-4 f'rinstance), I get jerky playback and poor A/V synchronization -- the processor just can't keep up with decoding the data streams in realtime.
Software bloat shows no signs of abating either, for better or worse. I bet that most people won't be satisfied with the performence of Windows XP 2005 on their 1.5GHz machines of today.
Thanks for the article reference...
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
there are AFAIK no companies that make nanotubes in sufficient quantity and quality to feed the demand for the tubes at the moment
yes, this is true. However, if you took the time to read the article you would read that the process described grows the nanotubes in place (using a chemical process).
unless you are a gamer home computers are more than fast enough now for what we want (internet/email/minor word processing) this kind of tech will only benefit the "Power User" community..
yes, this is true. However, in the future everybody will be a gamer. Everybody wants immersive VR, whether they realize it or not. All you have to do is dangle a superintelligent earpiece in front of people, and they will *want* one. Don't give me some bullshit about how 3 GHz should be enough for anybody.
Magic self healing server pixie dust!
=Smidge=
Hyperthreading was built into the very first Pentium 4 (Willamette) processor, who's design started around 1994 (maybe 1995, I don't remember) under the codename P68. Regardless of when the design started, the first chip was released in what, 2000? That's well before Intel hired most of the Alpha team and got IP rights to Alpha technology.
Now, I'm not saying the Intel invented SMT (hyperthreading), but they didn't really just take it from Compaq either.
Most of the Intel inventions are either not disclosed (trade secret), or are modifications of existing technology to make it commercially feasible. Much of the process technology Intel adopts (or not adopts) is due to cost considerations, not just processor performance. Therefore, while IBM probably has technically better process technology, Intel has better yeilds (lower cost per processor).
Some "inventions" created by Intel include:
- the first microprocessor (4004)
- the first commercially used 2-level adaptive branch prediction (Pentium Pro) (invented with research done by Prof Yale Patt and his students)
- USB
- PCI
- AGP
- PCI Express (most of these buses were done by working groups headed by Intel)
- the first commercially used post-decode trace cache (Pentium 4)
- lot's of low power techniques with Pentium M
There are a lot more, but usually not public.
Dan
Ok, this is the same NASA that only uses 486's in shuttles?
Ad Astra Per Asper
Could we hook up pressurized air and make a complex web of pneumatic tubes? We could send actual packets of stuff all over the computer.
But if you got a virus on such a device (like SARS), your computer might start coughing.
I can see Motorola trying to add carbon nanotubes to the 68000 (ahem, *Dragonball*) and try to convince Palm to switch back to the platform for the latest Tungstens... Or the Bitmap Brothers making yet another vaporware announcement of their upcoming graphics chipset using carbon nanotubes in the race to beat nvidia and ATI on paper and HTML based content (fan sites).
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Why didn't I think of that? Duh!
(slaps forehead)
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Not quite: it's not the *wire routing* that is being implemented with nanotubes here. Rather, as indicated rather subtly in the article, it is only *vias* -- i.e. the interconnect between layers of metal on the chip. It's a crucial piece of the puzzle, but still limited in scope. The limitations of the copper wires will still dominate.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
If you read the article closely, you'll see it's not talking about about replacing all copper interconnect on the chip -- only a small portion, in fact: the vias. The carbon nanotube are being used only for the interconnect between metal layers, not between devices on the chip in general.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
Apparently, NASA botched the metric conversion and the nano tubes are actually 6 inches across.
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