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NTT Verifies Diamond Semiconductor Operation At 81 GHz
Anonymous Coward writes "This story over at eetimes.com reports of a semiconductor made of diamond that is able to run at 81 GHz." Mmmm, foreshadowing.
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Should be able to run Doom III.... heh.
Do you need a website upgrade?
forever
...should we start imagining Beowulf clusters of these?
So, will these new chips be free as in speech, or free as in De Beers?
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
Does anyone know how hot these things will get?
in other news, M$ released Windows 2005 beta to NTT. "With instant messaging, help characters, voice response mouse buttons, and background autopatching, the operating system still takes 10 seconds to load Word." says Jerry Chang of M$ product development. "We feel this is the sweet spot. Give us Moore's Law, and we'll give the same speed you got used to in 1993."
"CPUs are Forever" is not conducive to Moore's Law.
I can give my wife a new processor for her birthday! I can see it now:
"But it's an 18 carat Intel, darling!" - "WHACK"
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
Good luck getting more than two of those chips, let alone a cluster of them.
Vacuum tubes still being used in production broadcasting... I did not know that...
Screed
...not just a girl's best friend anymore.
So with all the problems we're having these days getting data (memory) near all of these cycles, I can't even imagine what the situation would be with a processor built around these kinds of speeds.
I'm imagining something like Dante's level 7 cache or something.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
>>The diamond devices are expected to be in demand to replace with the vacuum tubes that are used in the high frequency, high-power applications such as receivers and transmitters at digital TV broadcasting stations.
Did I miss something? Did Japan miss something? Is there some reason they're still using Vacuum Tubes over there?
Other than that, cool article. These are only being used for cell phones right now, but it's a step in the right direction.
Imagine the leet overclockers of tomorrow...
"How hot is your CPU running?" "Oh, about 200C" "Wow, what are you using, liquid cooling?" "Nah, it's just an AMD Rumplestiltskin, so it runs cold."
"The diamond devices are expected to be in demand to replace with the vacuum tubes that are used in the high frequency, high-power applications such as receivers and transmitters at digital TV broadcasting stations."
Now why wouldn't they think people would use them in computers?
So when do the Diamond Jubilee-yum processors come out?
I'm hoping for a whole line of processors based on anniversary substances.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
the new method of manufacturing diamonds from pure carbon, and we might have the birth of a new "silicon valley".
...a geek's best friend.
The GHz myth has overtaken the MHz myth. *shakes head*
- Your Friendly Mac User
Now AMD's PR ratings will be through the roof!
If these get this fast and this hot, I can see now the idea of any form of material around it spontainiously combusting if a coolant system dies. Just think, no dust problems, it just incinerates in the case.
I'll finally be able to play an mp3 and scroll Slashdot in IE 6.0 with no skips!
I once overclocked my yu-gi-oh to that speed
seriously though why even bother jumping out there with news like that considering we haven't even tasted 10ghz chips. I wonder how much of this is just coprorate hypeage (nice bushism there). Think about it for a second, is this going to be future google cache, this technology? Ever notice when something here is touted as the next *in* thing, it ends up as nothing more than storage space on google's cache servers. Instead of talking about it, release the thing. Besides I need to compile quicker than the eye can handle. In fact no only do I want to be able to compile and run things faster, I want me machine jacked into my brain to do the work for me.
MoFscker
I heard that scientists have lab-created diamonds now. (Similar to lab-created Emeralds)
Do you think that this could increase the performance since impurities could be at a minimum?
30 W/mm??
Don't they mean 30 W/mm^2?
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
I can now say that I have "ice" in my computer while listening to Nelly
Well, if James Bond's right, at least obsolescence won't be a problem. Diamonds are forever!
I'm so glad it's theoretically impossible to make a processor above 300Mhz. How does it go again: "In theory there's no difference between theory and practise, in practise, there is."
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
If that was an 81 Ghz Athlon, could you heat an entire city with it?
the next big ceiling in CPU design is electricity consumption. Nobody cares about it in PCs now, but when CPUs start hitting several hundreds watts, businesses and home users will be forced to take it into consideration or else be badly burned each time they open their power bill.
Making CPUs faster is all very nice, but the deciding point in purchasing an AMD vs Intel CPU in a couple of years may very well be in how much electricity it uses, even more so than how fast it is.
Like computer prices aren't high enough already.
(This is humor. Yeah, I know: "Diamond cartel! Not actually expensive! Industrial diamonds cheap!" Mod me (-1, Unfunny). Not (-1, Stupid).)
Maybe now Mozilla will run at a tolerable speed...
This tech has some serious military applications.
Killing devices like the star drek phaser is not that far off. The high energy output potential because of the thermal characteristics is scarry! Just imagine if the output of a cell phone could have a signal db and directional capable antenna. Yipes you could get scrambled brains if the antenna was too close. The radar and remote sensor applications for this could kick current US stealth tech out the window as well.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Can I borrow your wedding ring for the lan party??
Money not found! A)bort, R)etry, D)eclare Bankruptcy
I noticed one thing... Anytime there's an article where nobody really understand the concept or the technology underneath it, for example like this one... And what did fellow slashdotters do? Crack jokes over it.. You guys are outrageous! ;-)
Will sys-admin for food
Off our medication again, are we?
karma: Marianas Trench (mostly blub blub)
Now when you processor becomes obsolete... you can gave it like a gift! Really nice.
:)
And i was excited about using a Celeron-A 333Mhz as a key ring.
now Computers are forever? but all my tech friends (oh wait, i'm a geek..) keep telling me my computer will be out-dated in two months. will this be the reversal of said rule-of-thumb? oh, the chaos!! intel may well go bankrupt..
...does that mean we'll have cubic zarconium CPUs for the cheapos? I can just see my dad buying me a glass CPU while Jimmy down the street gets a diamond one.
"But boy, you can't even tell the difference! Look at it gleam in the light!"
"Dad, that's the case lighting on fire."
The dog just got kicked out for the woman's best friend. Goodbye Sparky, helloooo Sparkly!
Now i have to make sure the cpu is really a diamond before i can overclock it?
This lengthy article gives a fascinating history into how the DeBeers cartel has created artificial scarcity in the diamond market and convinced the western world that a "Diamond is Forever". Before the 19th century, no one ever had to spend 6 weeks salary on an engagement ring!
From the "I Probably Have the Facts All Wrong But" category:
A few days ago I saw on CNN part of an interview with some reporter (Wired, maybe) who was discussing what sounded like a recent breakthrough -- the ability to create a diamond using some sort of machine process using pressure and silica. The reporter was displaying a diamond ring made with that process and was suggesting that the international diamond cartels (De Beers, etc.) could find their business disappear in a few years.
If someone knows anything more about this, I'd be interested, particularly with respect to the purity of the diamond. My guess is that if such a process could be implemented, making a diamond with sufficient purity could play a big role in the subject of this article.
DeBeers is shitting a brick over it too, because that means its nearly impossible to tell a diamond from the ground from a lab one, except the lab one is even purer. The good part of this is the tech industry has far more muscle and clout than DeBeers does. DeBeers is truly an evil company sown on the blood of africa and putting them out of business would do the world a favor.
In fact, the only way for this technology to become realistic is for large scale lab diamond growing like I mentioned above. Its still many years off.
-
Okay, seriously moderators, it's time to stop moderating "diamonds are a geek's best friend" and "maybe now I can give my girlfriend a [heavy-duty graphics chip of the day] for our anniversary" as Funny. Every freakin slashdot article that mentions diamonds in any context has these jokes. That's what the "redundant" tag is for. :)
Anyone who's bothered to do the research into it knows that DeBeers is about as evil as a multinational can get. Somehow I doubt that they are going to play nice with another industry that wants to use thier bread and butter product for making something that doesn't cost $100,000 a gram.
As I see it, there are one of only two outcomes here:
#1) Someone finds a way to make cheap diamonds, and DeBeers goes after them (in more ways than just the legal route) to make sure that #2 happens.
which brings me to
#2) Nobody finds a way to make cheap diamonds, and DeBeers can triple their prices. Of course, the diamond supply is already kept artifically low to drive up prices, so meeting this new demand won't be a problem at all (it'll just cost you the price of a small car to buy a CPU.)
I don't like this one bit...nope...not one bit. As if Microsoft's monopoly wasn't bad enough.
Wired has a much more interesting article about a couple of US-Based companies that are mass producing gem-quality diamonds with the eye of using those to finance their entry into the semiconductor materials market. It's a pretty kickass article and definitely helps show that this is something we should expect to see in the reasonably near future.
This month's issue of Wired Magazine has artificial diamonds as its cover story. Just finished reading it a few hours ago. Very interesting as to where this is going to take the diamond jewelry business (DeBeer's is in trouble) as well as the semiconductor industry.
Well, either way.. Having seen dozens of PC's each and every day for the last 5 years, the top 10 most stable and 'non-rooted' machines have all been running Linux.
Is it the user? Probably. So.. learn Linux and you will have less problems on average =D
> 81 GHz CPUs will NOT result directly from this technology. Therefore, unfunny.
Thats why its funny! Sheesh, if 81 Ghz CPUs WERE going to result directly from this technology, then it wouldn't be as funny!
I've seen stories of Intel showing off their 10 GHz CMOS transistor (or inverter gate, which would be 2 transistors), but at that signaling rate *nothing* can get done between @(posedge clock). P4's 20-stage pipeline would grow to 400 or more (latch, and-gate, latch, repeat). Imagine the size of the Out-of-Order execution units on that CPU.
So, while the clock rate is impressive, it probably isn't doing anything effective in the first place. They're just red-lining their cars in neutral.
I wanna be a CPU when I die :) http://www.lifegem.com/
Humans turned into diamonds... diamonds into semiconducters.... hrmmm.
Diamond Memory Modules (aka DMM) would have to be used with these things I suspect. For such a jump in speed would also require a similare jump in memory capacity, and speed. Saddly I don't know how this tech would equate to memory density, but if anything the increased speed would be nice.
Secondly, I remember seeing something on television once that described the multi-national diamon cartel DeBears (spelling?) as attempting to halt the commercialization of artificial diamons. Certainly natural diamons have defects and are not flat. Aledgedly The cartel somehow was able to stop the production of artifical diamons for the purpose of jewels, but in the proces they got certain rights to the technology of growing diamons. GTE developed the technology in the 80's and I don't think it ever got past the application of diamond tipped drill bits.
</rant>
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
oops, scratch that! [New "cultured"] Diamond is for 3 years...and then it's time to upgrade! [duh, the processor, not the wife]
I was a little surprised nobody mentioned this story that was posted recently here.
If this man and his product really pan out, we could see some eally exciting advances in the semiconductor industry. But there could be a billion dollar enterprise that might think otherewise.
A quote from said artice:
But De Beers wasn't backing down. Throughout 2000, the cartel accelerated its Gem Defensive Programme, sending out its testing machines - dubbed DiamondSure and DiamondView - to the largest international gem labs. Traditionally, these labs analyzed and certified color, clarity, and size. Now they were being asked to distinguish between man-made and mined. The DiamondSure shines light through a stone and analyzes its refractory characteristics. If the gem comes up suspicious, it must be tested with the DiamondView, which uses ultraviolet light to reveal the crystal's internal structure. "Ideally the trade would like to have a simple instrument that could positively identify a diamond as natural or synthetic," De Beers scientists wrote in 1996, when the company unveiled plans to develop authentication devices. "Unfortunately, our research has led us to conclude that it is not feasible at this time to produce such an ideal instrument, inasmuch as synthetic diamonds are still diamonds physically and chemically."
With this technology we'll finally be able to go back to the future.
Ive just realised - the flaw with this is that diamonds may become worthless - like junk jewelery. Then women will want us to spend 6 weeks salaray on some unobtainium.
Oh yeah, tube amps sound way better than solid-state.
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
One obvious benefit I can see is if AMD uses diamonds for their flip chip technology, it would be very difficult to crack them when the heatsink and fan are installed. I can't wait!!!!
This does not mean that complex circuits such as ALUs and CPUs will be able to run anywhere near this, due to thermodynamic constraints. There we go again, getting all excited over a number aka why P4 outsells Athlon XP so well.
Here is the word from NTT. They talk about using the chips in communications satellites and radar. The expected higher reliability would really be a plus in military and space applications.
ooga booga booga testing
...will one of these CPUs cause large regional blackouts from the copius (sp?) amounts of power they consume?
... these new 81 GHz CPU's won't send us back to the future, we will have to wait until the 88 GHz CPUs!!
Imagine a 20-stone, oval-cut Beowulf cluster of these.
(I should be ashamed of myself for that, but I'm not.)
Someone you trust is one of us.
In stargate SG1, all computers (besides the ones on earth) are composed of lighted gems that are attatched to supports... real insigth from the writers ???
I would expect these to be used (first at least) in super computers.. you know, situations where lots of money can be spend -on diamonds- to acheive massive raw throughput. Maybe if artificial diamonds become common, you'd see beowulf clusters of these, but until diamonds are cheap, I guess that we will only see these in lower number CPU high bandwidth supercomputers, not many-node distributed systems..
;)
But we can only wish, right?
I've got one on my finger now (and he's an ADMIN!! ;> )
The engagement ring has a vacuum tube; it's a bit ungainly next to the goods, but, hey, fuck it; I'm in love and love means not having to say "heatsink," right, lover?
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
There is a cheapskate Linux user, who just nukes the os and puts Debian on the $299 PC. Diamonds and the cartel will be broken by this tech. There is going to be one heck of a demand for synthetics, don't forget the diamond can deliberately contain impurities for the purpose of changing out put characteristics. It would be interesting to use slightly radioactive metals in the diamond formation or enery path to create secondary field effects, as well. We are on the verge of a breakthrough in wave signal technology at the atomic level. Just imagine a miniature electron microscope for 500 bucks! That is how important this tech is. Medical imaging tech from selected energy wave lengths could become cheaper. The down side is of course the scarry military applications, on the high output side of this tech. Buck Rogers shoot um up space weapons and Star Wars defence are not that far off. The computer applications are secondary. The international military establishments will not be able to resist the possibilities. The same way Hussein could not resist the crazed ex patriot American and Canuck Gerald Bull and his mega gun technology. I will take bets a certain Swedish arms manufacturer is looking seriously at creating a working battle field laser right now! The developers of US field weapons are most likely doing the same.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
...that after we reach that 300 GHz barrier, and it is not possible to have CPUs faster than that, we will already be headed down a path where parallel computation is the focus.
:) at the same time!
:p Maybe I have a shot at the next-next generation CPU. ;)
I am thinking along the lines of DNA computing or quantum computing, where the CPU(s) cunch numbers in efficiently massive parallelization. Instead of solving all the factors of 15 in a linear, one by one approach, we will have computers that go about all the possible factors simultaniously, and in one "operation" report back all the true and false factors. Either with many quantum atoms, numerous DNA strands, or even an large number of traditional pipelines in a CPU. It is this direction of massive parallelization that I think we are headed.
Heck, it is already like that with fiber optics. Copper could send one signal (2.7x10^8 m/s), then they went to fiber which was faster (2.99 x 10^8 m/s). Once we reached that theoretical, and practical, barrier, we got "faster" through parallelization. No, we don't just send 1 or 3 or 10 light signals down a fiber, we can send up wards of 380 different signals (well, in my lab
I just wish that I had thought of sending more wavelengths down a fiber long ago... if so, I wouldn't need to be reading slashdot for fun.
Then why does underclocking reduce the power consumption?
Very few people are understanding what the article is saying
The research teams have been able to fabricate semiconductor gates. In other words, they have probably been able to make a couple lone transistors (on/off electrical amplification switches) on a substrate lying in a lab with very controlled conditions -- long way off from computer processing.
You can run Doom on this about as easily as you can run Quake with your bedroom lightswitch...
There are some very undesireable things about semiconductors. They are low power devices. They don't work well at high frequencies. Couple these faults together and you let out the magic smoke on higher frequency applications (mostly Sat-Comms).
There are work arounds for the low power problem. In my job, (US Navy Electronics Technician) I've worked on an LF transmitter that could crank out over 150KW. It was all solid-state. The workaround to not cook silicon? It used about a freaking million amplifier circuit cards. I think it might have been more efficetive to just use 4 PA tubes but whatever.
Now the problem is high frequency and high power together. Consider the semiconductor. Two (slightly) different materials with a depletion region in the center. Well that's basically like a capacitor. Capacitors tend to pass higher frequency signals. If the signal is getting passed, it is not getting amplified. This problem is called inter-electrode capacitance. Tubes suffer from the same downfall. They dont just resemble capacitors, they are capacitors to a degree.
The tube world has to use some pretty crazy devices to amplify signals at high frequencies. These methods cannot transfer to the solid state world. For more information google for "klystron", and "travelling wave tube".
But because the issue of inter-electrode capacitance cannot be easily solved with workarounds. The only way to have a high frequency, high power amp, is with a tube. With higher quality semiconductors, this will no longer be true.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
This is part of the reason why the fibre optic revolution has been more of a slow turn... fast pipes are great, but it helps if you know where to send them.
81GHz isn't going to solve the problem - but it will help.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Apollo Diamond is now making near perfect crystal diamonds by vapor deposition. Their product has fewer flaws than natural diamonds. Since the diamond jewelry industry has been making a big deal out of "flawless" diamonds for a century, they're stuck - the industrial process is better than the natural one. Semiconductor process technology has been making near perfect crystals of silicon, quartz, sapphire, ruby, etc. for years, after all. This is just the next step.
Sapphires used to be rare gems. Not anymore. Linde Chemical started making synthetic star sapphires in the 1970s. Then sapphires went into volume production. Then the patents ran out. This is where the sapphire industry is now:
A few years, and bulk diamonds will be on the Home Shopping Channel.
The Russians developed a way to make diamonds that are indistinguishable from 'natural' diamonds in almost ever respect except one. The only difference between the two is that one glows for a slight while after being lit with a UV light. Of course, try persuading a prospective fiance that one of those Russian diamonds is as good as a naturally created diamond.
Diamond supply is already kept artificially low but the demand side is artificially kept high through advertising.
That inhuman pack of gunship flying, mercenary hiring, indigenous population exploiting *ssholes can suck it down and shut up.
Our obsession over "pretty sparklies" is disgusting, and what we are willing to ignore to ensure a steady flow is reprehensible. How many middle-class housewifes with a rock on a finger know the TRUE cost of that shiny bauble?
Lets wake up to ourselves and try to develop a modicum of common sense? Why are diamonds expensive? Because they are in demand. Why are they in demand - no it is not the industrial applications? Because they are expensive.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
As for tube amps in high-power situations, that's still the norm. The reason tubes fell to discrete transistors was mainly due to the fact that tubes have to be heated to work right. While several tube heaters in a small radio mean serious inefficiency, a 200W tube heater coil in a 200 KW radio transmitter means that all of 0.1% of your broadcast power is used for the tube heater - no big deal. Add to that the fact that large transistors are very expensive and the difficulty of moving heat away from the junctions in something that large, and tubes are still the natural choice for really high-power applications.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
I read that article about deBeers quite a while back and then forgot where it was. Recently I wanted to get a friend to read it, and I spent a whole evening looking on the net before giving up in frustration. Thanks a lot for the reference!
I knew a professor who was said to be able to make them by sticking coal up his ass!
if NTT is making these what's to stop them from moving into the processor market. Intel has already stated they've invested so much into their current platforms that they dont want to start researching a new material.
:)
Perhaps with this breakthrough they might see the light. Of course between them and AMD whoever could turn this into diamond chips would own the processor market.
Imagine DoomIII on a 81 Ghz system
For diamond CPUs, maybe it is just similar kinds of circuits on a (possibly doped) diamond substrate. It is not a pure diamond, although the substrate might be purer than most natural diamonds.
IBM has been testing SiGe chips at up to at least 350-400GHz last time I checked and producing and selling chips at up to at least 110GHz. Intel's made claims of tested transistors in the THz range.
Not to rain on the "OMG look how many GHz or THz that is!" parade, but there are even higher numbers to "OMG" at =)
Put InP (indium phosphide) and SiGE (silicon germanium) in to google for more max Ghz fun...
There is probably even faster stuff than that out there!
So will we end up with a computer component that is a more attract target for thieves inside and outside of companies?
The semiconductor industry also have VERY deep pockets. Considering that a modern silicon fab costs several billions of dollars, anyone who can afford a number of these can have a pretty fight with DeBeers if the latter want to pick a fight.
Tubes for Hi-Frequency amplification? You've shown your ignorance right there.
Let's take the main user of tubes nowadays, rock guitarists. Why do guitarists (of which I am one) still use tubes when technology has gotten better? Sound shaping.
Back when guitar amps first came out, they weren't the most Hi-Fi devices around. In fact, their hi end replication was horrible. Just look at any spectrum sweep of a tube device's output.
Nonetheless, those first electric guitarists had no choice. Then fidelity started getting better. I'm sure amp makers tried the new tech, and the guitarists did as well. But something happened, the sound was now to bright, too shrill. Well it wasn't that the guitar's sound was too bright, it's just that now the amps were faithfully starting to output the guitar's full frequency range. However, this sound was musically unacceptable. The old warmer sound with the attenuated high frequency harmonics is what people wanted. So back to tubes it was. As a side note, the tubes aren't the only sound shaping part in a guitarist's rig. The speakers too play a part, they also attenuate highs as well. Want proof? Hook up any guitar speaker to your stereo system, you'll notice the output will sound rather crappy. Guitar speakers are not meant for sound replication, they are part of sound creation.
Another test you can do is to hook a guitar going into a distortion box direct into a stereo. You'll get this nasty, thin, shrill and buzzy sound. It won't be the archetypical distorted guitar sound one is used to. That's why amp box replicators are used lots of times when recording direct. They attempt to mimic the hi frequency attenation that the lo-fi speaker/tube combo creates.
As an aside, any sound is usable, even the "crappy" ones I've mentioned.
So back to tubes. When you want hi end end attenuation, it's tubes. For hi end replication, you want solid state.
Uh, no, it's my ability to READ that makes me come out of the woodwork. I gladly fight laws that infringe on freedom of speech all the time, but I have no RIGHT to freedom of speech unless my State has a clause in its Constitution that assures it. It's not there. Congress is defined in Article I as comprising a Senate and House of Representatives. Congress has been give power under Article I to pass all laws. "Congress shall make no law" is therefore in absolute terms. I'm not saying this because I really want to be able to shut up the spammers (national anti-spam regulation and the Do Not Call list is clearly against the First Amendment as writen, BTW.) I'm doing this because I want the law comprehensable, consistant and within reach of the common man. If the courts can go and through "common law" (again, if it ain't made in the legislature, under the Constitution, it ain't law) change the meaning of the document, then the Constitution itself is completely worthless and you can only protect your rights by hireing high priced lawyers, and even THEN you aren't assured as the courts like to ignore the Constitution when it comes to, say, the Ten Commandments being displayed in a court house (and no, I'm not refering to former justice Roy Moore).
Now, the questions is how long before I am moderated Off Topic or a Troll? Sorry, I get worked up about this stuff. I saw my opening and I took it.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Tube sound is different than solid state sound. I have a old Dynaco ST 70. Blow the shit out of anything solid state. If you do not believe me. Check out the newsgroup rec.audio.tubes. Also, tube amps just report the distortion figures correctly. Not like the Future Shop garbage of today.
I hope you're being sarcastic;
Actually, I'm being entirely serious.
the only area where there's even a difference between the output of tubes and transistors is when they're overdriven.
That's a damn lie. All the recording artists I know use a tube preamp on their vocals -- and how do you overdrive a vocal track other than screaming into the mic?
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
from the It's-Not-Your-Old-Ass-Computer-It's-The-Shitty-Mic rosoft-Software Dept.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
If you want to get pedantic, pick any pair (x,y). unless equals(x,y) is true, different(x,y) is true. Now better(x,y) is a special case of different(x,y), but its meaning is context dependant.
Sometimes better(x,y) maps to greater(x,y) or less(x,y). So it is entirely possible that for some value of better(), better(tube, silicon) is true. If, for example, I'm a salesdude at a hifi store and you are a customer with stacks of cash. Then *clearly* better(silicon, tube) is true. However, after I sell you the tube amp and I'm spending my commission check on my own amp, better(tube, silicon) is true as long as I'm trying to optimize for a maximal personal bank account.
If I'm trying to create the best listening device for my music, then... it doesn't matter. All my music is in MP3 format which horribly degrades the original signal. A nicely distorting vintage tube amp and a nice martini are probably the ideal combination to help me forget.
A diamond with enough surface for a Pentium 4 is going tocost a few million bucks.
Only a few such diamonds have been found. Maybe that IBM bloke was right - there will be only 5 supercomputers in the world.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
realistic 3D pr0n ;)
Does this mean the end of geekdom as a bloke's domain?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
While there is quite a bit of debate about what people "think" about the sound quality of either format, there is some definite evidence to support the technical superiority of the sound quality of CD versus LP. The basis of this scientific evidence lies in sampling rates. The frequency range of a CD is roughly 2-20,000 hertz and produces that range the same way everytime it is played given good equipment. The frequency range of an LP, while not as low as a CD, carries much higher frequencies in the spectrum upwards of 40,000+ hertz. Of course many would say "You idiot, no one can hear that high." and they would be right. However it has been proven that while the human ear cannot 'hear' those higher frequencies, the overtones that sound produces in those higher frequencies do alter the quality of sound in the human range of hearing. That said, digital technology has arrived with sampling rates in excess of 90,000 hertz that cover those overtone spectrums. But if we are talking about CD versus LP, the LP is technically superior in rendering the moment of recording. It's those overtones that people are talking about when they speak of the 'warmth' and 'presence' of analog sources.
Story here.
Rather cool.
I was just thinking the same thing outloud when that Wired article on synthetic diamonds was up.
I would so much love to see a package design with a CPU that had DRAM clicked right onto the sides and just ditching the motherboard altogether.
Of course this would be a bit more than a package design to be useful without a board, it would require an SOC as well. Sounds out there, but TSMC was hyping their SOC plans as the next big thing awhile back.
But then all it would need would be outputs for VGA, USB2.0 and perhaps two Gig ethernet ports. That would be so sweet.
Imagine filling an industrial freezer case with a thousand of these little babies Use an oversized scroll compressor on the refrigerant and there ya go supercompiting for the masses. You could even put a glass lid on it with blue LEDs.
But even better, you could use them individually as well wherever you needed computing power and with the slick form factor they'd be so fashionable they'd probably even woo the Mac crowd. And talking about saving desk real estate. It's a win-win unless you're a mobo or case maker. So where is it?
Hmm... Diamond engagement ring for girlfriend or new 82 Ghz diamond CPU???
That's going to be a tough one.
A distinctive mark, characteristic, or sound indicating identity
perhaps you should go read the article titled :(
it will explain why your thinking is typical, and also incorrect
i used to think the same thing as you cuz thats the popular view, but that doesnt make it correct.
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
Here's a Wired article about some companies that are perfecting the diamond manufacturing process. A technique called Chemical Vapor Deposition can apparently produce diamonds big enough for a chip wafer. Also in the article of an interesting discussing about what does "real" diamond mean to people/women. I wonder how can they cut diamonds into wafers?
Eight gigs of RAM may be quite continental
But diamonds are a geek's best friend
Broadband may be grand but it won't pay the rental
On your humble flat or help you at the automat
Girls grow cold as comps grow old
We all lose our root in the end
But square cut or pear shape
These rocks don't lose their shape
Diamonds are a geek's best friend
Yeah diamonds are a geek's best friend
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
2015-AssociatedPress. Hip hop groups and fans all of a sudden start rapping about computer hardware. Some attribute this fad to the pervasive use of diamond semiconductors
Yeah, it's different. More distorted.
You can prefer the sound of whatever takes your fancy, but we have this concept called 'science' whereby we measure things in an attempt to be objective in our assessments rather than merely operating by opinion.
I used to have a valve amp too (a Scott), sounded lovely and warm - but had poor power output and the case became electrified - I replaced it with a solid state Class A (Musical Fidelity A1) that sounded MUCH better, and then that with a Pioneer that sounds MUCH, MUCH better.
That was classic intercourse!
With respect to the interest in power handling capability, if you don't think modern CPUs run significant power, you can always try taking the fan off your CPU heat sink and see for yourself.
Lots of different companies working on diamond semiconductor substrates, most are thinking about future CPUs, not future RF power amps.
Wonder if this can be combined with carbon nanotube technology?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Using a valve preamp is like a photographer using an 81a filter. It isn't more accurate, but it might be preferable for your particular project. Anyone who uses one blindly is just a mystic.
That was classic intercourse!
I just think it's rather cool that there are still some things - i.e. amplify UHF signals - that only tubes can do (I'll ignore Marshall tops and audiophile equipment for a moment, since solid-state equipment can do almost the same job). Tubes might be hot, fragile and short-lived, but they look great when you turn the lights out.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Why would you choose to believe the linked article when it was written by someone who SELLS VALVES?
You fell at the first hurdle!
That was classic intercourse!
Bring Back the turbo button!
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Police! They stole my diamond! It's worth a lot of money! It was my computer chip!
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
and no references to Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". We're slipping.
Bring on the Drummers!
(I realize it's not nanotech, but carbon semiconductor fabrication is a steppingstone on the way there. I also realize it's not molecule-scale DigiComp, but still.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I need an 18 karot computer?!
The lunatic is in my head
The application they are targeting is single-transistor amplifiers (and mixers) for radio transmission and reception.
So it your world revolves around computers and gaming, forget about CPUs, and think extreemly high speed wireless bandwidth.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Note that this is peculiar to CMOS as the gate in a CMOS device is insulated, thus preventing current from flowing. This is not the case in TTL circuits, which do dissipate power when the devices are not switching.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
"Pentium 5" actually means Fivetium Five. Neat.
Jag pratar lite svenska.
...will still take 5 minutes to start.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
"Honey you know those earrings I got you for our anniversary...well I'm going to need'm back"
"Actually, improvements like pipelining don't affect the maximum clock frequency of a microprocessor (the GHz thing) very much. What they do improve is the average ammount of processing work that can be done per-clock-cycle."
A 20-stage pipeline is one of the many reasons that the P4 runs SLOWER clock cycle-for-clock cycle than its predecessor or the Athlon.
A 3 GHz P3 will trounce a 3 GHz P4. But because of its design, the P3 can't scale very far beyond 1 GHz. The P4, on the other hand, still has lots of room to grow.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Honestly, the efficiencies of a tube amp vs. a silicon-based amp won't be much different.
But for high-power amplifiers, tubes are much cheaper. The border is somewhere in the kilowatt range. Once you hit 20 KW, tubes are the only way to go unless you have SERIOUS amounts of cash to spend. Tubes are also easier to heatsink, and more durable in certain situations. (While they have some natural failure modes that transistors don't, such as filament burnout, tube amplifiers can tolerate certain conditions that would fry a transistor amp such as a highly mismatched load reflecting a significant portion of power back to the amplifier.)
Also, in the microwave regions, some tubes can develop gain where transistors were unusable until recently. Some of AT&T's first communications satellites used TWT (travelling wave tube) amplifiers because it was just not possible at the time to amplify a microwave signal at any decent power level using transistors.
Also, one thing to note about this article: They got a single transistor amplifying an RF signal at 81 GHz. Given that current transistor technologies were amplifying 10 GHz+ signals long before CPUs reached 1 GHz, don't expect to see 80 GHz CPUs any time soon. Expect maybe a 100-200% increase in clock speed over silicon at best, given other claims made in the article about this working up to about twice the frequency of existing technologies. (Note that they are probably referring to GaAs instead of Si in that case, which is why I say 100-200% rather than 50-100%)
The big benefit to diamond will not be with clock speed, but with the ability to fit more transistors on a chip w/o melting down.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Valves have warmer overdrive characteristics and some natural compression when pushed slightly.
...as you cry yourself to sleep again.
While I can't say how a lone transistor from a Pentium would behave (Transistors for digital logic are designed for on/off switching, RF transistors are usually designed for linear amplification. Note that 81 GHz is not the switching speed of the aforementioned transistor - It isn't anywhere CLOSE to any form of switching operation, it's almost surely amplifying an 81 GHz sine wave. For switching operation, you'd have frequencies present at harmonics (multiples) of 81 GHz.
But a general idea: For single RF transistors, silicon can easily go up to 10 GHz, possibly even 20+. This does involve changes in the layout of the transistor that optimize it for RF amplification rather than digital switching.
A big issue in CPU design is not the actual speeds of the transistors, but delays due to the fact that each transistor gate has a capacitance. The more inputs a logic gate's output feeds, the slower it will switch. Fanout is a killer in digital circuitry - And is the number one reason why memory speeds are so slow, because those address lines have LOTS of transistors connected to them.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Actually, according to an article in a recent (this month?) Wired magazine, there is a corporation in Boston which is developing ultra-pure diamonds using a vapor disposition techinque. While the initial generations of diamonds produced in this way will be expensive, if they prove useful, mass production will ultimately drive the price of diamonds through the floor. Haha! take that DeBeers! (seriously, DeBeers's corporate executives cannot come to the US without being arrested, and they are single handly responsible for keeping the price of diamonds so high that wars can be financed via "blood diamonds" even though the mineral is not actually rare)
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Keep in mind that the very nature of transistors causes a very small amount of electrons to trickle through...this is THE cause of the hum you hear in solid state amps. This hum does not exist in a good quality tube amplifier. Yet another reason musicians (not JUST guitarists) prefer tubes to solid state.
I thought it was typically 2 or 3 months' salary.
Maybe it's different in various parts of the world... or maybe we're just differing over "before/after taxes" values. *shrug*
Karma: NaN
The article writes about problems with the diamonds purity. However, September's Wired has an article about manufactured diamonds for this purpose. One of the diamonds created by a plasma carbon process can be used to grow diamonds in a wafer shape for processing. They have succeeded in creating a positive charge with Boron and also a negetive charge also using Boron in a process. This allows npn or pnp transisters. Because they are grown instead of mined and DeBeers does not control them, they are also cheap enough to be a mainstream computing resource. These diamonds are flawless and perfect size and shape. Unlike trying to use mined diamonds, you dont have to find diamonds that match because they are all grown the same.
That's a concern in recording, where overdriving the preamp can create interesting effects; guitar players know all about this and many prefer tube amps for the pleasing distortion.
To be more specific - it's more in the production than the recording. And not *just* the preamp tubes - those 'valvestate' type amps with the tube pre and solid state power amp section still sound like ass compared to an all-tube beast like my JCM900 head. Don't bother trying to say I'm being elitist or whatever here, at volume there *is* indeed a diffrence between solid state and tubes in your guitar sound - especially after you've been playing for a while and the tubes are good and warmed up.
I guess fire isn't invented where you're from?
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
its NOT written by someone that sells valves, its just on the site of someone that sells valves.
:(
perhaps YOU should bother reading it!
YOU fell at the first hurdle. actually informing yourself is useful sometimes.
The important fact is that the paper was written by Hamm and presented at the 43rd Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, back in 1972. So there really is no excuse except obscurity for not knowing what it says
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
"Sounds better" OUGHT to depend on the purpose.
As a musician, I WANT to be able to "color" my music with amplification, distortion, effects boxes, etc. That's why tube amps are most popular with guitar players, bassists, and other amplied-instrument types. They're after a particular sound, and those old tube amps seem to do a much better job of producing it than a "cold" digital processor.
However, as a listener, I want to hear what the musician did to the signal, not what my equipment is doing to it. The goal of an audiophile OUGHT to be "perfect reproduction". In that case, the LAST thing I want is distortion or coloring.
Finally, the goal of the recording process is always to accurately record the original sound - and that should include the gentle distortion from the Fender tube amp, or the phasing sounds from the wah-wah pedal, or the pulsing beat of the Leslie rotary speaker, etc.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
DPA (formerly B&K) make some.
I te m-4007.html
http://www.dpamicrophones.com/eng_pub/Products/
The reasons that we can't with current generation hardware are:
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
now I can watch pr0n in 3D virtual reality at 500 FPS
When she finds out what I did with the engagement ring I bought yesterday, I'll be lucky if I live long enough to sleep in the doghouse.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Hm. I don't hear any hum in my dad's (gigantic, bitching) solid-state amps. And I have very sensitive hearing.
You sure it's there?
(having never heard a tube-amp system, I can't really compare tho)
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
there is a corporation in Boston which is developing ultra-pure diamonds using a vapor disposition techinque
You're thinking of Apollo Diamond, which plans to use revenues from selling vapor deposition gemstones to fund research into diamond semiconductors. There's a nice writeup about synthetic diamonds at E2.
However, in many markets, synthetic diamonds sold as gemstones have to be labeled as synthetic, giving De Beers an out: "A diamond isn't forever if it was grown in a lab five days ago."
Will I retire or break 10K?
1) There is big money in manufacturing diamonds. Big money buys good security.
2) This is the US we are talking about, a country that is now very touchy about terrorism and the like. DeBeers could easily find themselves under the axe is they tried something, and they know it.
But the biggest
3) The US military has an intrest in this. I don't think I need to elobrate on why they are ones with whom you do not fuck.
From reading the Wired article I get the feeling and Gemesis and Apollo have good operational security and DeBeers would be hard pressed to take them out via illegal means. It seems that their tactic at this time is to try and get a "real vs fake" campaign going and convince people they want only real (as in form the earth) diamonds. I have a feeling that will be less than successful. However they are not equiped to compete in teh computer market, where the money really is, which is what both these companies are ultimately after.
Is the diamond transistor really even all that special? IBM announced a 210 GHz transistor a long time ago. Any wonder why the PPC 970s are kicking the crap out of anything Intel has to offer? [Sorry, I couldn't resist ;)]
This causes real problems for higher frequencies, though, since IGBT's can't operate much past a MHz or two. Certainly, to broadcast in the range of 1MHz (AM radio, roughly), you would need a signal of at least 50MHz. Possible? Not easily. Even if it could be done, the high-order bandpass filter required to seperate out the higher frequencies to a point where it would be legal to transmit would get you.
It is *possible* that class D amplifiers may see their way into radio eventually, but this won't happen for quite a while.
This isn't so critical for FM radio, which commonly uses solid state components in a class C amplifier.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
as their students scoff at the idea of code optimization...yet again.
One thing I find interesting is that even after CPUs have gone from 30MHz to 3000MHz (two orders of magnitude faster) people still complain about slow software. Yet, ironically, a computer from the early 1980s would boot in a second from ROM. Granted modern computers do way more stuff (e.g., the Solaris run control directories are chock full of fluff by default...easily remedied, though).
Regardless of code bloat, however, it seems that 300MHz CPUs (both x86 and RISC ones) were a breaking point for practical speed. The fasted computer I have ever owned is just a 300MHz CPU, but it will still run OpenOffice.org and Mozilla comfortably (thanks, in part, to an Ultra320 SCSI drive...).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Remember, P=I^2*R. When switched fully "ON", "R" will be very, very low, causing a very low power dissipation. When switched fully "OFF", "I" will be very, very small (leakage current only). This leakage current across the large "R" still produces very small power dissipation.
Try to run one of these solid-state switching elements as a class A amplifier and see how long it takes to let the blue smoke out.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
How can a sound be "warm"?
Then anything is possible in a year. =)
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
he is merely operating on opinion, too bad he didn't use that science thing he was talking about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm just glad you didn't try to make an argument based on time sampling, like most do. The frequency response of vinyl is aweful, full of peaks and valleys due to the medium.
It's much more likely that you enjoy the sound of distortion that comes with the analog system. I've had a couple old (decent) analog systems that put out very pleasant sound. The actual frequency response was AWEFUL!
DSP can certainly reproduce the effect you are looking for. If you accurately measure the impulse response of your audio system, it's almost trivial to make a DSP algorithm to duplicate it. In fact, if you measure the impulse response of your digital system as well, you can even add a deconvolution filter to remove any distortion caused by the analog parts of the digital system while adding back the distortion of your system.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Why hasn't this technology been adopted by general CPU designers?
Probably because Nintendo may have an exclusive license to sell products containing 1T-SRAM, and it may last anywhere between the lifetime of the GameCube and the lifetime of the patent. Be glad there's no Cher Patent Term Harmonization Act.
Will I retire or break 10K?
First off, who said anything about trunked 16-bit? Dither, it works for graphics it works for sound too. If you've never heard a demo of digital dither you really should check one out. I can give you some MP3 files that demonstrate it, but this best is to hear a high quality system play a 24-bit sournce and then take that down to 16-bit with dither and without. The dithered signal doesn't have the resolution of the 24-bit signal, of course, but it sounds a hell of a lot better than a simple 16-bit truncation. Gets rid of all quantization noise too, if done right, at the expense of a tiny bit of hiss.
:P
Second, comparing CD to record isn't something to be done with normal music. Why? Well generally speaking most music these days is limited and compressed to hell. I can show you some waveforms if you are curious. Now this does NOT tend to be done on records for a number of reasons. Well, this squashing of the dynamic range is very detrimental to sound on high end systems. It is much preferable to hear something with wider dynamic range. So if you pick an auditon peice, make sure it is mastered the same on both formats. That's hard to get these days
Next, make sure to understand teh difference between "good" sound and "accurate" sound. Good sound is whatever you happen to like. If the sound pleases you, it's good. What this is will vary per person. Accurate sound is another thing entierly. Accurate sound means having it as close to the orignal as possible. In terms of reproduction, digital has it won there. It is simply possible to exceed the accuracy of records. Now for CDs, well there is some debate. Cds certianly are more accurate in some ways, but at least teh way most are mastered less accurate in some. However CD is not the be-all, end-all of digital. For a real eye opening experience, just try going to a 24-bit source. That alone is amazing. However if you want to REALLY hear the current best in digital check out a PWM system like Sony Direct Stream Digital. I forget what they call their consumer version of that, SACD I think. It it just damn impressive.
The problem with the "sound is analogue so analogue is better" line of thinking comes from the limits in storage and reproduction. It has gotten to the point where it is possible to store thing more accuratly in a digital format, or at least any sort of format that you'll see outside of a controled environment. Then you combine that with the fact that the digital source will REAMIN true, and there is just no contest.
Now this isn't to say taht records can't give a pleasing sound or that a good record setup can't be better than an average digital setup, but ultimately digital is a superior means for storage accuracy and longevity.
>They are immune to EMP.
Back in the Cold War, the biggest ham radio organization got some time on a military EMP simulator and tested this idea. There's an account of the results at http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/emp.html, along with references to the original and quotes from informed speculation about post-apocalypse communication.
If you're in a hurry, the executive summary is that there are two kinds of EMP mechanisms to think about. One is in the near vicinity of the blast. "Near" as in "near enough that it's the least of your prolems". The longer-range type is like a wide-area power surge. A semiconductor device that would die from static electricity is *more* likely to survive an EMP-induced surge than a tube is, because the lower impedance lets the current surge through.
Interesting. Could this be used to diamond-plate objects?
These guys don't need discs at all. Each module has 500megs of DRAM, they boot Live-CD distros off a USB DVD-R. If one goes down, you just reload off the DVD and you don't need a DVD for each room.
Then how do you store your accounting information without either rotating media or flash memory? What if the power goes out?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's commonly used as a microwave transciever, since it can be modulated with an external voltage, and can also (from what I recall) decode the modulation as well (the output voltage is proportional to the difference between the internal resonant signal and the incoming signal).
The one in a microwave oven is roughly 400W at 2.4GHz. That's quite a bit of power from a little tube.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Yeah, but good luck with Daikatana II! For that, you'll need at least a dual CPU configuration of these.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
So why do we still use DDR on the desktop?
Because a home DDR kit gives me an aerobic workout without having to leave my house during a thunderstorm.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Solid state circuits (especially MOS devices, although bipolar are still vulnerable to a lesser extent) are vulnerable to voltage spikes. Vaccum tubes are vulnerable to POWER spikes. You can easily pulse 1MV through a small radio tube, as long as you do it for a very small time, without causing damage. Try that on a MOS device and it'll burn right through the insulating layer (ESD does just this).
While it doesn't require being very close to the blast to get a substantial voltage, you would probably feel the blast if you were close enough to get that kind of power from it.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of 81Ghz machines??
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
After reading the last Slashdot story making artificial diamonds, I talked with a number of people.
A couple of years ago, DeBeers went to the FTC to make ensure that man made diamonds could not be marketed as diamonds. It worked. Man made diamonds have to be sold as "Cultured Diamonds" to clearly indicate that what they are buying wasn't the product of 5 million years geothermal heat and compression.
After talking with a couple of coworkers and jewelers about cultured diamonds, I discovered that most people were expecting a catch and were reluctant to believe cultured diamonds had the same value of "real" diamonds.
I believe there is a huge psychological barrier that cultured diamonds have to overcome before they can serious threaten DeBeers.
One should especially note the history of Cultured Emeralds, which after 20-30 years, are only valued at a fraction of "real" emeralds.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I think it is mainly a sign of the pride of modern societies that newlywed couples are expected to demonstrate that they can afford to feed an expensive meal to everyone they've ever met at once.
It's not as recent as you may think; it was true in the Middle East in the first century A.D.
Let me tell you a story about a young man named Joshua. He was at a wedding reception with his mother Maria when they were about to run out of wine. Back then, running out of wine was a bad omen, signifying that the family probably didn't have enough resources to feed a family. So Maria had Joshua place concentrated wine cooler mix in the water pots, and Joshua told the servants to fill the water pots with water, wait a couple minutes, and draw out the water. By then, it had soaked up the wine cooler mix and turned to wine.
Of course, because the Greeks and Romans had trouble pronouncing the name "Joshua", they called him "Jesus" instead.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The companies researching synthetic gem-quality diamonds aren't spending all that time and money just so they can glut the market and watch their profits dwindle to practically nothing. The diamond market will remain tightly controlled
Last I read, Apollo Diamond's motives were purer than that. According to its public statements, the company merely wants to use revenue from synthetic gems to finance development of diamond semiconductors.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's not a senseless bash against Windows. It's a legitimate concern that makes it difficult to use Windows for professional applications like audio production. It makes absolutely no sense to optimize for the eyes when the ears are much more sensitive to dropouts. If there's a momentary delay opening a menu, people won't notice that as much as their audio buzzing while the menu is opening.
A solution to the problem with music today
From the article:
In other words: Diamonds are used because they can take high voltage and high heat. I.e. they run damn hot! Just wait until these things make their way into your typical laptop computer cellphone.
/me waiting for a whole new world of class-action burned-ear (or scarred lap) lawsuits.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Thats what I do, I get a hard-on from imagining beowulf clusters of anything.. (UGH)
"Oh my, yes oh my" - Professor Farnsworth (Futurama).
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Intel process that is used with P4:s currently does 50Ghz transistors in similar metrics. And they probably have double that in their labs, wating to be perfected for mass manufacturing in coming years.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
... to say goodbye to the South Africans and welcome our new German and Japanese diamond overlords.
Given that the final shuttle accident report was released today, I'm surprised that no-one else has touched on this topic.
The Reinforced-Carbon-Carbon panels have been noted to get very pitted and pot-marked over time. Indeed there has always been serious concerns over this component.
Given the chemical process for synthesizing diamond wafers, isn't it reasonable to deposit a single sheet part super heat conductive material that would replace the reinforced-carbon-carbon on the space shuttle wings. Diamond is the hardest substance known to man. Isn't it reasonable that such a macro-application would be reasonable and logical.
Other near term application could be heat sinks in other industrial super-heated applications. I could even imagine sythesizing the linings of cannon barrels out of sheet diamond. How about aircraft "black boxes" made out of sythesized diamond so that they absoluetly CANNOT be destroyed.
On more application could be to organically grow the hull of a small submarine capable of diving to tremendous depths. A sufficiently polished application could be optically transparent!!!! That is no portholes required. Remember "transparent aluminum" from star trek. A chemically deposited transparent diamond panel could probably kick it's ass in strenth.
How about armor for tanks, helicopters and planes???? A thin panel may be stronger then the most exotic alloy.
A sufficiently advaned systhesizing process may be capable of produce "machine grade" parts that will effectively NEVER wear.
The 20th century was the century of steel. With a reliable diamond production process, and technology that generates carbon nanon-tube threads (as well as bucky ball "bearings"), this could be the century of carbon!!!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
yeah and I know recorders who believe their is a difference in sound when they transfer digital data over copper vs fiber. It's digital, it's 1's and 0's with error correction that finishes transmission without any change in content whatsoever of either medium. But try to explain that to them...
We are talking about a superstitious lot here, reality doesn't back their beliefs.
Hey, I don't care about .001-dB accuracy on my vocal tracks; I like them sounding good. Hence the using the tiniest amount of reverb when you're mastering; it gives the track a bit of presence.
And as far as people who use them "blindly" being "mystics", maybe, just maybe, it's that they've used many, shitty solid-state preamps and use tube amps exclusively because they prefer the sound. You know, experience might be it too.
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
okay, a tube can create a pure sine wave, whereas a transistor will ALWAYS have a gap between the minimum voltage it lets through and 0.
Perhaps I'm not explaining it too clearly, but I feel out of contact with the guy who once explained it to me, so I can't full well have him explain it again for you, now can I?!
Error 666 - Satanic SCO code found in your Linux kernel.
I can get my Pentium 4 to almost 80 Ghz through liquid nitrogen cooling.
Frost yourselves!
Tubes are limited by the fact that the cathode has to be hot, which gives the tube a high noise temperature, even when the filtering effect of the gate is taken into account. If the filament is powered by AC (it usually is) that is a source of hum. Hum in transistor amps is caused by poor power supply filtering or poor shielding.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
not General Motors
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Heh yeah. The "I disagree with you so you must be brainwashed" agrument. I'm impressed you dusted that one off.
It was only a single transister. Sheesh.
Huh?
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
We can do cooling, last week during the blackout, we were reminded that without cooling, the office buildings turned into ovens. I dare them to make a useful 80 ghz processor that "needs" cooling. We'll solve that when we get there.
Although diamond-based semiconductors will have their applications, they won't replace silicon in most mainstream computing applications for decades. Consider GaAs, a semiconductor that is faster and better than silicon. It was hailed as the natural successor to silicon back in the 80s. Yet, this delightful material has yet to replace silicon in a host of speed-sensitive applications because it is too hard to work with in large dies. The manufacturability of dense speed, not pure speed, is the real issue -- can you reliably pack 100 million multi-GHz transistors on to a diamond substrate for under a $1000?
A secondary issue is that diamond is actually inferior to silicon in power consumption because it has a much higher band gap voltage (5.4 V vs. 1.2 V). This means that circuits built from diamond must operate at higher voltages and thus consume more power. You think your laptop gets hot now, wait til the circuits are all based on diamond. Only if diamond can be fabricated into smaller circuits with lower junction and trace capacitance and lower resistance in the traces could a diamond-based circuit operate with less power dissipation than a similar silicon-based one. We should not confuse diamond's superiority for speed and power as being a superiority of power efficiency
The bottom line is that it will take many many years and many billions of dollars of investments for diamond-based semiconductors to be economically fabricated in with the densities and low rate of defects found in silicon-based semiconductors. And diamond's high power consumption may prevent its use in many applications. Until such hurdles are overcome, diamond semiconductors will be a crucial for niche applications but silicon will enjoy its continued reign as the main material used in digital electronics.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Chips in these frequency ranges are analog - low noise amplifiers, mixers, and power amplifiers. Commercially available chips are available up to 100 GHz or more. These chips typically have no more than 20 or 30 transistors, if not much less. The chips are ussually based around GaAs or InP processes.
The current limitation of these chips is power. The leader is TriQuint, which produces chips that produce 1 to 4 watts around 40 GHz. Thermal limitations are important - GaAs is a terrible thermal conductor. And these analog amplifiers are biased with transistors in conduction, so the efficiencies are on the order of 15% - they generate a lot of heat. (There are other limitations as well, of course, having to do with breakdown voltages,gate width, and switching speed.)
Up until now, the option for high power is a good old fashioned vacuum tube - the traveling wave tube. They have several problems - poor linearity, high noise, the need for kilovolt power supplies, and reliability. Also, they're not cheap to make.
All this to say, diamond is an exciting prospect for analog power amplifiers, and it wouldn't take very many transistors to really make something valuable.
I'm away from my reference books at the moment - does anyone have a comparison of the electron mobility in diamond versus GaAs?
(My associates would consider me remiss in my duties if I didn't mention their high power solid state amplifiers, at Sophia Wireless
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
diamonds are NOT rare!
:^)
Interesting quote from an old Usenet discussion:
"Remember that every jewelry store on the planet has thousands of the things.
While you can't quite pick them up in any pile of dirt, and the geology where
they are found is unusual, And in some mines the cost of production is
significant, there are neverthless, quite a wide number of sources, many of
which produce rather large amounts of the things. The prices charged for
diamonds is a monopoly controlled value, not one that truly reflects the costs
of production, or the rules of supply and demand in a truly open, competative,
market."
We all, here are Slashdot anyway, know something
about monopolies vs. open markets...
Since the fastest CPU was about 5 GhZ last year, and next year with this new diamond tech it may be 200Ghz I guess we have to scratch this doubling every one and a half years law. Looks like the growth curve is going to explode.
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Wee!
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S|
P|
E|
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D|
| ---- 2004, Speed accelerates way faster.
/ ---- Moore's Law: doubles every 1.5yrs
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Y E A R S
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
I wonder why you posted a link that you obviously didn't read. Making diamonds into wafers is on page 4.
Carpe Deez
??? You have to update any OS moron. Eventually bugs and holes turn up. Linux just has a much better track record getting them fixed right away compared to Windows. Did I say that you don't have to update Linux in my troll? No. I didn't.
No it's not. That's a pretty absurd statement. I'll grant it's getting better, but it has a long ways to go.
This must be the difference in our levels of intelligence. Linux took me 6 months to get confortable with and 2 years to master. Windows took me less time than that, but it didn't allow me to do anything useful (tweak security and performace, etc...). I got so bored with Windows after coming over from the Mac, that I ditched it within 9 months. Windows had little to offer me in version 3.1 and it still has less to offer me even now. Show me where I can get at the kernel tuning parameters in Windows and then maybe I'll give you half a point for knowing something about computers. There's more to it than just clicking "Next" and "Finish". A LOT more.
and 100% rock solid stable.
Big fucking whoopdeedoo asshat. I can make Windows crash in more ways than there are applications for that platform. You CAN'T crash the Linux kernel unless you do it intentionally or you run a piss poor piece of code. Truth be told you can make any OS crash if you WANT to. But Windows is one of those rare OSes that can crash if you sneeze the wrong way. And rebooting your NT servers is a monumentally stupid way to prevent problems. Even though I can't stand Windows, I will say that the best way to resolve problems with it getting unstable is to track it down to the cause. The cause is usually (just like with your stupid Linux Anecdotes) a poorly written application. Fucker. You should NEVER have to reboot a system to keep it "stable". 24-7-365-Decade. That's uptime mother fucker. My latest uptime on my Linux box is 600 days. Read it and weep shitstain.
No it's not. Missed all the discussions about making money with OSS?
And I should care about making money for why? I do this because I LOVE it. Not because I want to be a rich bastard. Money is worthless to me. I want knowledge. THAT is true power. Some fucker with cash is just a pathetic ape who isn't that far evolved from the ones in the zoo. Go beat your chest somewhere else knuckle dragger.
To believe it is is your own undoing. I made that mistake, and my server had to be rebuilt by somebody more competent than me because some jackass rooted it.
So because YOU are a failure you claim that Linux is the failure?? What a fucking stupid dickflap you must be! How do you survive? Linux is easy to use if you invest your time in learning some basic computer science. If you can't be bothered, then get into another field or go by some Lego Mindstorms and call yourself a robotics expert. We don't need asswipes like you. Seriously, spend some time learning about the OS and you will see how easy it is to use. These days I can do anything with a Linux box that any knuckle dragging Windows "admin" can with his. And I can do it a hell of a lot faster. AND I can do it with slower, older hardware. I've got a Celeron 400 with 64 Megs of RAM running two DNS servers (internal and external), WINS, DHCP, File and Print sharing, Web serving (Five personal web sites), mail (IMAP, SMTP, POP3), network backup of all ten machines in my house, ssh server, mp3 and ogg streaming server, Remote desktop for "thin client" computing. Tell me you can run NT4 with that much stuff going on with the same hardware. You CAN'T. My firewall is a Pentium 200 MMX with 32 Megs of RAM. It does logging and has multiple IPs on virtual interfaces pointing to the outside world. You can't do that with Windows and not get rooted in a day. However, the fucking hackers don't even have a clue that I'm on the net because of how stealthy my boxes are.
So fuck off jackass.
Silence child! Or I will take a huge shit in your foresin and make you clen it out with your tongue.