New Solution For Your Transistor BBQ

servantsoldier writes "There's a new solution for the transistor heat problem: Make them out of charcoal... The AP is reporting that Japanese researchers, led by Daisuke Nakamura of Toyota Central R&D Laboratories Inc., have discovered a way to use silicon carbide instead of silicon in the creation of transistor wafers. The Japanese researchers discovered that they can build silicon carbide wafers by using a multiple-step process in which the crystals are grown in several stages. As a result, defects are minimized. Other benefits are decreased weight and a more rugged material. The researchers say that currently only a 3" wafer has been produced and that a marketable product is at least six years away."

Comments

Sigh, i must be really tired.

[Baka_kun]

the text said "... that Japanese researchers, led by Daisuke Nakamura of Toyota Central R&D Laboratories Inc., ..."

but i read "...that Japanese researchers, led by Duke Nukem of Toyota Central R&D Laboratories Inc., ..."

other than this, Great, if this works in practice well be having new smaller cpus for everything.

but im still waiting for a pda without screen, that uses my glasses as a screen.. but thats more of scifi than reality.

Re:Sigh, i must be really tired.

[1010011010]

Silicon Carbide does work -- Cree, Inc. of Durham, NC has been manufacturing electronics (particularly blue LEDs) for years using silicon carbide as the substrate. The technology was developed at NC State University, as I recall.

Finally... Heat can be put to good use

[chatgris]

This may be modded as funny.. But realistically, think about this.

The amount of heat being generated by chips does not seem to be decreasing at all, and this material appears to be produced to be "heat resistant" instead of more efficient.

How long until your PC puts out enough heat that it would be economical to re-use that heat for a hot water tank, or for winter heating?

How long until we need special 240V plugs like electric stoves have for power?

I think that emphasis on more efficient chips is a better venture than heat resistant materials, as the whole heat byproduct of CPU's seems to be sprialling out of control.

Josh

Charcoal?

[mikeophile]

Think knife-sharpener.

Silicon carbide is really hard stuff.

It's not quite diamond, but with a hardness of 9.25, you could use your SiC processor to grind real axes and not just figurative ones in flamewars.

Re:Charcoal?

[DarkMan]

Not quite.

I've got a quitea bit of experience with SiC abrasives, what with the materials engineering and being a bit of a lapidary.

First off, it's nowhere near diamond in terms of hardness. The Mohs scale is semi-arbitary in assignement, and not even vaugely linear. On proper hardness scale (in this case Vickers), diamond has a hardness of around 90 GPa, compared to about 25 GPa for SiC. That's the reason I've got a box full of diamond abrasives, despite the cost (about 30 times more expensive), they are much faster, and last almost indefinitly. More later on this.

Secondly, SiC needs to be rough. If you don't belive me, try grinding a carrot into shape on a window. The glass is very much harder then the carrot, but is nearly perfectly smooth, and as such, the carrot just sides about. Compare with rubbing the carrot on something like a concrete paving slab, which grinds it much better. The reative hardnesses are wrong here, but show the need for surface roughness.

As an aside, if you think that paper cuts are bad from standard office paper, then try getting one from fine SiC abrasive paper. Stiffer paper, cuts deeper, and the abrasive roughs up one side of the cut, so it takes about four times as long to heal. It's a mistake I've made exactly once.

A processor is not a single pure material - if it was, it wouldn't do anything. They are a complex layered system, with layers of copper and SiO. Trying to grind anything with a processor die will just succed in scraping off all that important stuff. The hardness of SiO is Mohs 7, well below that of anything actually used as an abrasive for metals. (It's the same as ground glass, near enough, sometimes used for abrading wood or plastics).

For comparison silicon has a hardness of 12 GPa Vickers. SiC is only around twice as hard as that.

So, no, you can't really use it as an abrasive. If you really want to be very careful, you might be able to use the edge of the die as a scraper, but you'd probably just remove the important stuff.

That's alla moot point, however. I strongly supect that you'll never see the actuall die, it will be under a metal heat spreader. Because they can cope with higher temperatures [0], there is even less need to take the risk of mishandling breaking the die.

And lest you think that SiC would be less likely to break then silicon, I'm afraid not. Aside from the fact that many broken Athlons are due to the top few layers of SiO and metal breaking, SiC is not that tougher than silicon. As any lapidary will tell you, it's perfectly possible to chip saphire and diamond, if you're not careful.

Still, I can't deny that facts aside, it's a wonderfuly evocative metaphor.

[0] And how much higher! Silicon tops out at 350 C, SiC could operatate at 600 C, where is it glowing red hot! sourced from Nasa

In Japan...

[Johnny Fusion]

The researchers say that currently only a 3" wafer has been produced

Hirohito: Oh! You must have very big wafer!

Owner: Excuse me?! I was just asking you what you're up to with this manufacturing process!

Nothing! We are very simple people with very small wafer! Mr. Hosek's wafer is especially small!

Hosek: He he he! So small!

Hirohito: We cannot achieve much with so small wafer! But, you Americans! Wow! Wafer so big! SO BIG Wafer!

Owner: Well, I-I guess it is a pretty good size

typical bad science journalism

[harlemjoe]

From the article....
In an advance that could lead to lighter spacecraft and smarter cars, researchers have developed a new technique for producing a high-quality computer chip that is much more resistant to extreme conditions than the silicon found in most of today's electronics.

So a chip more resistant to extreme conditions is also somehow 'lighter' and 'smarter'...

A good step forward for science, but not for science journalism...

Re:typical bad science journalism

[mikeophile]

The chip itself isn't lighter, but the cooling equipment required can be much smaller, making for much lighter and rugged devices that use those chips.

But yeah, that article was pretty light on details.

Six years away? Super!

[teamhasnoi]

I'll be able to use these in my flexible paper display ebook with fuel cell technology as I drive to work in my hydrogen powered flying car!

I can't wait!

Re:Finally... Heat can be put to good use

[spellraiser]

Yes, but I still think water cooling is the way to go, personally.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Japan and work for a Japanese company. Trust me, stupid business process patents are not unique to the U.S. Our company has attempted (sometimes successfully) to patent some of the most obvious, blatant crap by tagging "online" onto it. AND WE'RE NOT EVEN A TECH COMPANY!!

In the event that we find out that someone else already HAS "invented" this idea, it is usually NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph) which has also registered the hell out of a shit load of trademarks that it doesn't use.

And, over here, there are a lot of people worried that we've really lost our tech edge against China and Taiwan. To a certain extent, I think they're right. China and Taiwan used to be copiers, not innovators. But then again, so was Japan half a century ago. Recently, China and Taiwan have started innovating too. It should have been obvious that they "could" innovate, about 18 years ago when the first fake Nintendo consoles from Taiwan were found. They say over 80% of the circuitry, including the CPU, was original, and not a copy. (Then again, a lot of the fake Apple IIe machines back then were pretty original too, sometimes with features that weren't available on the real thing!)

Steve Jobs it coming!

[ArcticCelt]

Steve Jobs when asked what's next for the iPod:

"You know, our next big step is we want it to make toast," Jobs answered. "I want to brown my bagels when I'm listening to my music."

Damn Steve, again, he saw this charcoal technology coming before anybody. :)

What does silicon carbide have to do with a BBQ?

[Jason1729]

Silicon carbide is a very hard, brittle material with a very high melting point commonly used to make crucibles and high speed saw blades and drill bits.

Comparing this to charcol is like saying that Carbon Monoxide is the same thing as Oxygen because CO contains oxygen.

Jason

All this silly stuff, but

[panurge]

Silicon carbide and diamond both have significant potential use as power semiconductors. Forget CPUs, think I/O. Think smaller power supplies, smaller audio drivers, more rugged automotive systems, and, ultimately, being able to shrink robotics controllers as a next step to producing very small robots. If a robot's motors are running at 80C, you want the power semis to be able to handle that. Furthermore, a lot of possible fuel cell designs run at fairly high temperature and, again, you want the electronics to survive the environment without too much cooling.

There are also huge potential benefits for rad-hard communications satellites, where cooling is a major problem (radiation only.)

What about electrical properties?

[Hank the Lion]

It's very nice that SiC can withstand high temperatures and is very hard, but are these the most important features of a semiconductor material?
I would be more interested in band gap voltage, electron/hole mobility etc.
Who needs a chip that can run hot when it cannot run fast?
Maybe for specialized hardened aplications like space, but I don't see these being used for mainstream applications.

The good news, the bad news....

[mikael]

The good news, your graphics card can be overclocked to 2 Terahertz, and still remain operational at over 650C.

The bad news, is that the aluminum casing of your PC will melt at this temperature, so your PC will need te be built from titanium.

Still not the solution

[Moraelin]

Yes, silicon carbide and water cooling will get the heat out of the CPU faster.

The problem still remains that a metric buttload of heat is produced, and that it comes out of the electricity bill. Sometimes twice: in the summer you also pay for the air conditioning, since that shiny new CPU is heating the room some more.

I think it's getting ludicrious.

The Prescott is already over 100 W, and Intel apparently plans dual core versions. Whoppee for 200+ W CPUs. NVidia 6800 Ultras are rated for 120 W, and they're hyping SLI setups now. Yep, _two_ graphics cards, if just 120W worth of hot air blowing off the back of the case wasn't enough.

Add hard drives, motherboard, and the PSUs own inefficiency, and you're already looking at 1000W worth of heat for the whole computer. That's already like a space heater.

In fact, go ahead and turn a space heater on near your desk in the summer, and you've got a pretty good approximation of what the next generation of computers promises to be like. Now picture some 4 of them in the same room, at the office.

And it's raising exponentially. Carbide and water cooling will only help them get further along that curve.

And I'll be damned if I'm thrilled at the prospect.

This also brings the problem of even more fans. Even with water cooling, you then have to get the heat out of the water. It still means fans. More heat will just mean more fans, bigger fans, or faster fans. Or all the above.

And I'm not thrilled at the prospect of the return of the noisy computer either. I can jolly well do without the machine sounding like a jumbo jet. Especially when I'm watching a DVD or such, I can do without having to turn the volume sky high just to be able to hear what they're saying. And at the office I can do without four noisy hovercrafts in the same room.