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First Ever Nanotube Transistors On A Circuit

Posted by timothy on from the waiting-for-productization dept.

btsdev writes "Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University have developed the first ever integrated silicon circuit with nanotube technology. According to the article on UC Berkeley's site, this brings researchers one step closer to developing memory chips with carbon nanotubes - chips that could hold approximately 10,000 times more data than those we have today."

7 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Always Impressive by Elpacoloco · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Berkley has made some great stuff over the years. But this is truly cool. You could make a supercomputer the size of your current computer tower today. Or maybe even smaller with some other control method.

    Or even maybe implant it in your body.

  2. Lots of small memory chips by vpscolo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you could get lots of small chips to give high memory density, pack them into a PC and then setup a huge RAM disk with some permanent storage things would suddenly become a lot faster

    Rus

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  3. Necessity? by agent+dero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ok, if you have 10,000 more the space, it all disappears when you power off right? Or when the power goes out?

    Also what about address space?

    How many bit CPUs will we need to address 1,280,000MB of RAM?

    Nonetheless cool, even though it seems either overkill or impractical

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  4. Re:Diamond substrate? by uglomera · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Diamond substrates and nanotubes face completely different challenges, and the issues with nanotubes will probably be resolved first. In that WIRED article, it was explained that it takes years to grow ONE diamond wafer, and they still haven't probably grown anything larger than 3-4 inch wafers. It will probably take several decades until they can serially produce 12" diamond wafers.

    Carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, need to have their type (metallic or semiconducor) and doping level (if semiconductor) controlled reliably, and also EDA tools extentions need to be written in order to incorporate them in critical paths on chip. This is a lot less work than learning to grow diamond wafers. At least De Beers will need to be brought to its knees before this will be reality. Imagine a war over diamonds...

  5. Re:Crud... by earthforce_1 · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Actually, the idea of building "integrated vaccum tubes" isn't as silly as it sounds. Transistors don't function above 200C, and microscopic tubes would allow us to build sensors and other circuits where transistors cannot go, at least without elaborate cooling. There has already been talk of using silicon vaccum tubes to power remote sensors in jet and aircraft engines, which must operate at extremely high temperatures.

    And I always thought they would find an idea home in robot spacecraft, where there is already a vaccum. They would also offer extreme resistance to the effects of hard radiation such as the Io belt around Jupiter, which tends to fry semiconductor electonics.

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  6. So how long? by PetoskeyGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    until they can encode the human genome in something close to the size of the human genome?

  7. Other research in this area by nissin · · Score: 5, Interesting
    First off, congratulations to all involved on this achievement. They barely beat the research group I am a part of at Caltech, which is working on the same sort of thing. Our chip is in fab right now, returning in a month or so.

    Information on the Caltech research can be found here.