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Intel To Make A Greener Microprocessor
crem_d_genes writes "According to the San Jose Mercury News, Intel is planning microprocessors that have a reduced amount of lead in them (reportedly 95% lower). It's about time a company started this - good job - and let's hope other tech companies take the hint. While many places in the US have banned the disposal of computer parts, there have been unintended consequences of the eco-friendly laws. Many 'recycled' computers currently get shipped overseas where parts eventually make their ways into the hands of workers who usually 'burn' the parts to get rid of plastic and recover small amounts of valuable metals. In the process they are exposed to the toxic compounds that are released. In other cases, lead makes its way into drinking water."
Why does x86 processors consume so much power? What is it about other processors like powerpc and transmeta that makes it more energy friendly?
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Yeah, it would be like Hummer promoting SUVs that have very little lead, but still get 8MPG.
Thumbs up, Intel!
Lesser power consumption, better optimizing compilers, new technology in place of the older x86 and creating more jobs are still in your list... don't forget it!
I myself have doubts they are doing this only because of environmental reasons..., but nevertheless it is a step in the right direction.
It really is. On many levels modern chip production is horrendously bad for the environment. It's a little known fact but pure silicon doesn't exist naturally on earth, it's a multistep process with some really nasty chemicals to produce it. Lithography is again a multistep process with some truly nasty chemical waste including some strong acids. The machines used to "dope" silicon to produce p/n junctions are often sold off cheep to hobbiests because of the large costs associated with cleaning and recycling them. If you find one don't take it, often they explode if opened. Then let's not forget that the next gen P4 is slotted to run, at what, 150 watts?
Oh, but wait, atleast now there'll be a quarter gram less lead in my computer.
Most people have all the computing power they need. It's time more people worry less about clock speed and more about their electric bills and what happens to all those chemicals after Intel's done with them. Cheers.
Don't mess with the bunny, outsideworld.org
The announcement is just PR!
I'm not denying that the lead reduction is real. It is real.
But this isn't anything unique to Intel, and it isn't done out of the goodness of their green little hearts.
Every IC manufacturer, in fact practically every manufacturer of anything electronic, is already investigating lead reduction or elimination at some level or other. Not all are making a public hoopla about it, though.
Lead free solder requires the development of new alloys and new processes. The changeover isn't trivial, but some promissing candidates exist. Typically they have very high tin content, plus some mix of Silver, Copper, and Antimony.
There are several reasons for this trend: Regulatory changes (pending in the US, and I think already passed in Europe?), Liability/Insurance cost (employee lawsuits), and waste treatment cost, including waste water.
My opinion: I don't beleive lead in electronics will ever be totally eliminated, nor outright outlawed. I'm no solder/process expert, but those I know tell me that leadless soldering presents many challenges. More likely in my opinion, regulations will take the form of taxes and fees on lead content, driving manufacturers to use it only where no good alternative exists.
Many have already written that the lead is in the glass of the CRT. If I'm not mistaken, lead is added to glass to improve it's clarity.
However, the lead in the soldering alloy is significant, too: the so-called "eutectic" alloy contains 37 to 40 % lead and the rest is tin (Sn).
Eutectic alloys have a lower melting point than any of it's components. That's exactly the reason why lead is added to tin, in soldering alloys.
Another very efficient dopant is silver - it decreases considerably the melting point. Unfortunately, it's expensive.
Tin is basicly innocuous, while lead is toxic. The problem with lead is that it causes a chronic poisoning called saturnism, where your brain suffers considerable damage - in fact, largely unrecoverable.
I should add here that there are historians that think one reason for the fall of the roman empire lies in the use of lead cups for drinking wine. These lead cups were quite popular in the roman army, and it's not inconceivable that this might have decreased the soldier's mental and physical abilities.
The problem with the lead-free soldering technologies is exactly the higher melting temperature of pure tin compared to the eutectic alloys. Reflow and other technologies have to be fine-tuned for higher temperatures, and the risk of damaging some of the components is significantly higher. I, for one, prefere much more to use normal, eutectic alloy for my hobby work.
Sigged!
Some twenty years ago, my friend and I we made some about a kilogram of pure gold from computer parts by dirty and costly chemical work, mainly from russian mainframe parts (remember "Minsk" anyone?). One russian card contained 10x more gold than japanese memory card or french connector mainly because of thickness, western parts are practically of no use.
The problem with the pure gold was it was contaminated with about 0.9% of mix of platinum and iridium so it was much harder then normal soft pure gold. It was not usable for local dentist nor for making jewellery.
We did not find any usable process how to separate platinum and/or iridium from the gold, so the only practical purpose of the pure gold was.. a magic stick.
There you are, staring at me again.
Quite the contrary. AMD has introduced the X+ rating for that reason. The problem is totally self-made. They've developed a design which has a better performance (Banias/Dothan...) at even lower clock speed. Now they have a problem to place that chip against its own products.
To clarify (and make sure I'm understanding correctly), Intel's "more MHz/GHz is better" marketing approach is presenting a problem to even themselves, much like it did for AMD a couple of years ago. Now that Intel is making more effecient (work done per-clock) processors, like AMD has been doing, simply comparing MHz among even just Intel processors is no longer a good performance measure, and might even make their new line appear slower (again, when comparing only clock-speed numbers).
It sounds like they're taking a step back from the P4 design, which were slower clock for clock than even their older (PIII) processors, but capable of higher clock speeds; so at the time the MHz myth worked to their advantage, where now it is no longer to their advantage.
That, and the market (in my opinion) isn't as speed-hungry as it was just a year ago. A quieter, smaller, more energy-efficient PC design is more likely to make the average user upgrade than a faster, beefier PC. Computers are "fast enough" for most people's needs (most of the time even for myself, a programmer and FPS game player).
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Coincidentally, just this week a Japanese customer of ours asked us to modify our firmware on our embedded device to support a different flash chip because the only one we currently support uses lead. We happily oblidged. So Intel definitely isn't the only company out there trying to be more "green".
-David
There. Now go play some cool javascript games!
Legislators looked at the amount of lead used by the electronics industry as a whole. Overall it is a lot, and as it is not actually necessary (it just costs a bit less), they simply said no lead in electronics.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Smoke much crack, or just to unwind on the weekends.
Semicondoctor fabs have a truly collosal ecological footprint, good thing what they make is worth more than gold. They consume tremendous amounts of water, and energy, to say nothing of the photoresists, acid baths and slag from the parts of the ores that aren't used. There are no doubt a log of computers, but you want to make an impact invent a lightbulb that costs the same or less, can be adapted to all the same fixtures, lasts longer, uses half as much energy, and get everyone to use it.
.. but what are they replacing the lead with? plutonium?
Semiconductor manufacturing is often an environmental disaster, due to the wierd chemicals and strong reagents used, in bulk, in the doping and etching processes.
The other popular alternative to silicon is Gallium Arsenide. Gosh, arsenic, another heavy metal with a place in the history of poisonings.
Lead, mercury, and arsenic are famous just because they're common on the earth and have been known since ancient times. All heavy metals accumulate int he body and cause problems, and I'm not sure that exotic ones are necessarily better.
I've never been sure that lead isn't being replaced with other metals equally bad. Maybe it is, but I've never seen an explanation of lead-free electronics that explains why the replacements are better, just that they don't contain the demon lead.