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."

Comments

...will it now?

[aerojad]

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.

Give Peace a Chance

[zachster]

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.

Re:And what's good, too, is that...

[EinarH]

Well, If this company succeedes, no one will care anymore.
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.

Re:I'll never be able to afford a new PC...

[Jo Owen]

Actually I would guess that the diamonds used in computing would be artificialy created to avoid flaws, and so they would be cheap as chips (excuse the pun), as the only reasons diamond prices are so high is because they are artificialy kept that way with limited supply.

Re:Cool

[killthiskid]

Screw that... screw having a motherboard laced with diamond... try a CPU that can handle multiples of the current 200 degree limit:

But the greatest potential for CVD diamond lies in computing. If diamond is ever to be a practical material for semiconducting, it will need to be affordably grown in large wafers. (The silicon wafers Intel uses, for example, are 1 foot in diameter.) CVD growth is limited only by the size of the seed placed in the Apollo machine. Starting with a square, waferlike fragment, the Linares process will grow the diamond into a prismatic shape, with the top slightly wider than the base. For the past seven years - since Robert Linares first discovered the sweet spot - Apollo has been growing increasingly larger seeds by chopping off the top layer of growth and using that as the starting point for the next batch. At the moment, the company is producing 10-millimeter wafers but predicts it will reach an inch square by year's end and 4 inches in five years. The price per carat: about $5.

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.

Re:Real vs. Fake

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The South African economy?

[wytcld]

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.

Re:The South African economy?

[eht]

The same thing that is done to any economy that is no longer needed, in the past the area where I live was the buggy whip making capital of the world, boohoo, they all got put out of work when the evil car companies started making horseless carriages.

Re:Tell that to your fiancee... :0)

[MsGeek]

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-)

They should market these towards geeks

[Daetrin]

DeBeers might succeed in convincing the average consumer that manufactured diamonds somehow aren't "real," however i suspect that even then they'll have a good market with geeks which can tide them over until the general public realizes they're being bamboozled.

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.

The Heat Issue

[Bruha]

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.