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The Diamond Age
bigner writes "The new diamond age is here and will revolutionize the computer industry. Diamonds show amazing potential as a superior semiconductor."
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... I guess this is it.
For years, we've heard about semiconductors the size of human hairs and how it would revolutionize the computing world.
I still see an AMD chip in my computer, and nice, large visible chips in the stores.
So now it's diamonds? I'm not trying to troll, but when will mainstream applications (see: desktop computers, or at least universities) come around? Until we see anything, it's all theoretical, and all subject to just being vaporware.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
I'm so pleased. Really really pleased. Aside from furthuring the hopes and dreams of everyone's favorite science fiction writer, this has a real potential for curbing South African violence. Call me liberatarian, but much like the pending legalization of all controlled substances (I can dream can't I?), a potential for cheap diamonds could destroy any black market demand for our little carbon friends.
Who would want some shine stones if everyone have them? It's the false sense of rarenes that makes them valuable. Hopefully diamonds will become a commodity like just any other rock.
It won't happen over night, but it will happen in a couple of years.
It's about time that someone challenges the De Beers and sell these stones below market value. There is absolutly no reason that diamonds should continue to have such a ridiculous price.
I'm looking forward to a colapse in the pricing of diamonds where one can get a *large* diamons for a couple of bucks.
So those of you that have diamonds other than for some sentimental reason: Sell why you still can.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
No seriously though, one of my undergrad profs, who works in quasi-crystals, said he wouldn't ever attempt to make diamonds in the lab, because DeBeers would want his head.
Screw that... screw having a motherboard laced with diamond... try a CPU that can handle multiples of the current 200 degree limit:
Five BUCKS per carat... let me repeat that. 5 dollars per carot. Damn.
You know all the effoft overclockers put into reducing heat? The complex cooling systems? The fans? The liqid nitrogen? Imagine a processor that will run at many times the current CPU upper temps and not blink. I don't give a damn if I ever where a diamond on my hand.
This is the break through that will allow Moore's law to continue to grow. Couple this with the recent things we've heard about the equivalent of Ohm's in the conservation of quantum sping, and we have the future of computing.
We may even blow Moore's law out of the water.
I'm not sure I understand how the diamond is fake. Do you measure a diamond by its strength? Appearance? Or where it comes from? If you want the first two, you can go with fake diamonds. If the third is all that matters, you could give her a chunk of rock (silicon and other chemicals) from the same area as diamonds. In the end, it's really just a psychological issue, something which De Beers has strived to manipulate to increase the importance and hence worth of diamonds. In some ways, I'd rather get a ruby or an emerald because of their color and worth.
The strength of that diamond on a ring isn't that relevant in most cases, anyways. Nor really is the source, except in deciding whether you condone the source's means of producing the final diamond product. With the availability of more diamonds, the artifically restricted supply will go down. As a side effect, more diamonds will appear and their value might become into more sane values. As an added bonus, digging into the earth won't be necessary. In the end, a diamond is a diamond because of its chemical structure. The fact that gem quality diamonds generally come from the earth is just a side effect of no ability to produce such diamonds at a reasonable price up until now. If you can live with that fact, buy the "fake" diamonds. If not, I think cubic zirconium might be a good side option.
Granted that deBeers should be out of business, what would that do to the South African economy? The conflict diamonds farther north, if devalued, will be a great blessing to the populations there. But in South Africa being a diamond miner is actually a relatively high-paying job, in the most Westernized black-majority democracy in the world. What portion of South Africa's economy - both employment and foreign income - currently depends on deBeers? This could be the equivalent of somebody foreign coming up with something that would obsolete the American auto industry. Thus it may not just be deBeers' own agents to watch out for - there's a strong national interest about to be trampled here. Not that I'd advise or expect the synthetics makers to pull back ... yet friends in high military positions may be just what they need.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I specifically told my husband, when I was still his fiancee, that I absolutely, positively, did NOT want a diamond as an engagement ring. I definitely knew all the facts about 'bloody diamonds' and I didn't want any part of them.
With the advent of manufactured (umm, "cultured") diamonds and their potential uses in computers, I suppose I might be interested in a little "bling bling" now. That is, if the "bling bling" is safely inside the newest, kewlest mega-badass computer. 8-)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
As a geek/technologist, i like at the "real" diamond in one hand, and the synthesized diamond on the other, and think sure, the "real" diamond is kind of cool, it was formed under impressive conditions and has usefull, interesting, and pretty properties. However the syntehsized diamond, we _made_ that. Humans made a machine in a lab that can do what takes Nature a few million tons of 2,2000 degree magma to do. THAT is impressive.
Even if they were the same price i would be tempted to go with the synthesized diamond, just out of pride for the human race. The fact that the synthesized one would likely be orders of magnitude cheaper just sweetens the deal.
And on top of that, as a geek i pay enough attention to realize what an evil company DeBeers is, that a lot of the price of a "natural" diamond is artificially inflated, and in at least some cases, possibly a lot of them, there's a lot of blood that goes into extracting the diamond and delivering it to where i could purchase it.
Finally, a few years back i remember seeing a tv show that was talking about synthesized gemstones, back when they were doing it with emeralds and rubies and such and still trying to get diamonds working. Some or all of the companies, and i don't remember if this was voluntary, or if the gemstone industries got some kind of law passed, added traces of certain chemicals to the gemstones so that they would glow if you shined certain frequences of light on them.
Now that is a marketing gimick just waiting to happen. "New synthetics diamonds! 10 times the quality for one tenth of the price! Not only are you not supporting African dictaorships if you buy from us, our diamonds glow in the dark under blacklight! How cool is that?!"
Of course another benefit of this might be that if diamond prices crash, we might stop seeing so much jewelry that's been diamond encrusted. Because of both the percieved and monetary value, jewelers seem to find it hard to resist scattering little (or large!) bits of diamond on just about any piece of jewelry they produce. This obviously increases the price (and thus the markup) and apparently a lot of people think they look better that way. Rings are especially prone to this problem. Personally i don't think diamonds are that attractive, and it annoys me that every time my girlfriend wants a present, i have to wade through about nine saphire and diamond rings/bracelets/whatever for each plain saphire item, which is usually both more attractive and cheaper.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Diamonds will never be free, as someone still has to find them, and mine them. Think of it this way: most everyone could grow tomatoes or Habanero peppers in their home, but how many do? Likewise, in mining, (a much more difficult proposition than growing vegetables) you have to buy equipment (even if it is just a pick, shovel, pan, and sluice), get transport to the area, feed and clothe and provide shelter, medicine, and personal protection for yourself, and break rocks and wash dirt to get a stone (or a nugget, or whatever it is you're mining for). You will have to move many tens of tons of rock and dirt to get one stone, and that's in a fairly rich deposit. Then there is the cost of licensing, claim ownership, bribes, fees, lawyers, etc. And of course, all this presumes that the person knows what to look for, where to look for it, and how to recover it.
-cp-
Learn something about semiconductors. Silicon wafers are grown by the Czochralski process, which uses a melted silicon bath with carefully regulated temperatures to pull out a large single crystal of silicon.
This material is grown by variants of vapor phase deposition, similar to the method used to grow III-Nitride semiconductors, like the GaN used to make blue LED's. This method will have a hard time scaling to large diameters, such as are needed to create chips.
My question here is, that you have this chip that will now run at 2k instead of 200 degrees but what the hell are you going to do with the heat? For home users are we going to start seeing dryer vents with firewall protection through the walls to the outside of the house?
I'm running 2 AMD XP 2000+ processors in a 12x12 room and shut the doors and it can be 100 degrees in there quickly. I'm sure it creates enough heat to raise my power bill some also but I have yet come up with a solution. I have planned on venting them out the Window but I have to handle the bug and security problem there at the same time.
I love diamonds. I really do. Staring into a diamond is like standing in a room full of mirrors. Even uncut diamonds are beautiful - I've got a nice uncut diamond brought back from Africa by a relative generations ago.
But it's always irritated me that the price of diamond has been kept artificially high by DeBeers. Given a choice between an artificial diamonds and an artificial price.... I'll take the artificial diamond.
Besides, it's not as if I'd ever be able tell the differance. Unless of course DeBeers starts supplying a fourier transform infrared spectrometer free with every diamond. Which, as I'm a techie who likes technical toys, is the only thing that would make me cough up the DeBeers premium.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Quit your bitching and get a MOV on.
Yeah, I think you mean "get a LDA on."
This is so "bought"!
Aluminium, and to a lesser extent steel, used to be rare and expensive because only tiny quantities occur naturally. Especially in the case of a pure mineral, I can't see the justification for requiring a perjorative adjective.
"Synthetic" is intended to be perjorative, or else DeBeers wouldn't be pushing for it. It will never happen, but it would be sweet justice if the FTC rules that natural diamonds must be called "contaminated crystal carbon".
Diamond semiconductors have already been produced by several countries -- South Africa, Israel, and the former Soviet Union, among others.
The good things about diamond semiconductor are its thermal conductivity and high bandgap. The high bandgap especially makes it good for satellite applications, where radiation hardness is needed.
However, higher-bandgap material has lower carrier mobility, which translates into slower transistors.
So, yeah, diamond may be more heat-tolerant than silicon. But it would have to be -- its gate voltages would be higher. In any case, don't expect to see any GHz-class chips made in pure diamond anytime soon.