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UIUC Creates World's Fastest Transistor Again
An anonymous reader writes "The University of Illinois has developed (again) the world's fastest transistor operating at over 500 GHz. They used an indium phosphide based wafer, and super-scaled dimensions. The device kind of looks like a spaceship." Milton Feng, the professor in charge of the team behind the transistor, admits that their ultimate goal is a terahertz transistor, which given their previous achievements, doesn't sound too lofty.
When I started designing hardware circuits, the world was much more beautiful. You could understand everything that your small micro-processor based system did, downto the function of the BJTs in the TTL devices down there... Then Intel started the 1GHz race and I had to learn a great deal of RF techniques to just design my next PCB. And now 500GHz?!!! At this rate, a few years later I'll have to learn more about RF and then eventually optics than next hot FSM synthesis algorithm! I guess I'd better change my job, start something more calm and steady, like paiting or ...
At 1 THz, it will take more than 40 clock cycles for a signal to move across a 1/2 inch die of the CPU. And it will take 320 clock cycles for a round-trip to a memory location just 2 inches away. (And that is assuming the signals travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, not the slower speed found in metal traces or optical fibers.) Should make it interesting for chip designers.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
y=3000/x^0.4
where x is size (nm), y is speed (GHz). 1000GHz will be reached at ~15nm.In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra