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HP's Crossbar Latch... Next-Gen Transistor?
moojin writes "CNN.com reports that "in a paper published in Tuesday's Journal of Applied Physics, HP said three members of its Quantum Science Research group propose and demonstrate a "crossbar latch," which provides the signal restoration and inversion required for general computing without the need for transistors.""
..the Original statement by HP and even more important HP's paper in the Journal of Applied Physics.
EETimes story
It's Patent #6586965
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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Every new chip design needs virtually new fabs.
Plus, 4 Ghz is not a measure of computing power. And of course, we do need more power than a 4ghz pentium4.
Lots of physics problems (think for example robotics) need to solve numerically differential equations, and that takes power.
As near as I can tell, what they've done here is implement levels of titanium and platinum nano-wires which pass each at right angle. However, to prevent leakage, at the crossover points they are held apart by Rotaxan molecules.
Rotaxan molecules are organic, and have this nifty little molecular ring which enables them to be conductive or not based on its position. Thus, you get your binary switch. This little animal is the "crossbar latch," apparently. And it can be done in something like 40 nanometers, making it scads smaller than current conductive strips.
Unfortunately, I'm having a great deal of trouble tracking down technical details. HP wants to keep its secrets, obviously, but Berkely and Stanford should be a little more forthcoming, think I. Anyone have links to more technical information? It would be greatly appreciated...
What he wants is more important that what I want. What he wants is also more important that what you want.
From nanoinvestornews:
A molecular crossbar latch is provided, comprising two control wires and a signal wire that crosses the two control wires at a non-zero angle to thereby form a junction with each control wire. Each junction forms a switch and the junction has a functional dimension in nanometers. The signal wire selectively has at least two different voltage states, ranging from a 0 state to a 1 state, wherein there is an asymmetry with respect to the direction of current flow from the signal wire through one junction compared to another junction such that current flowing through one junction into (out of) the signal wire can open (close) while current flowing through the other junction out of (into) the signal wire can close (open) the switch, and wherein there is a voltage threshold for switching between an open switch and a closed switch. Further, methods are provided for latching logic values onto nanowires in a logic array, for inverting a logic value, and for restoring a voltage value of a signal in a nano-scale wire."
From USTPO
"A novel switching device is provided with an active region arranged between first and second electrodes and including a molecular system and ionic complexes distributed in the system. A control electrode is provided for controlling an electric field applied to the active region, which switches between a high-impedance state and a low-impedance state when the electrical field having a predetermined polarity and intensity is applied for a predetermined time."
I agree with your point, but I just think in case people don't know, this isn't true quantum computing, per se. Though the technology does rely on quantum mechanics, and the science will quite possibly lead to quantum computing, all this is is a better transistor. Think transistor is to vacuum tube as nanoscale latch is to transistor. A true quantum computer is actually an entirely different type of computer than we see today, even moreso than a ternary or analog computer is different than a binary computer.
i ntro.html>good article</a> on this:
Cal Tech has a <a href=http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~westside/quantum-
-Amalcon
- Mean operations til failure: ~100
- Switching speed: ~100/sec
So they just need to improve its reliability by a factor of 10^16 or so, the switching speed only by a factor of 10^7 or so.Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I will be the first to admit that eventually there will be some limit to how small we can make a transistor (or transistor replacement) it seems that we still have a ways to go.
:-)
... which we're also nowhere near.
I knew all that research I did for my novel might come in handy one day.
The theoretical limits of information and computational density (based on quantum density limitations and reletavistic constraints on signalling, i.e. speed-of-light limits) are Bremermann's Limit and the Bekenstein Bounds, and we're one hell of a long way away from that. Practical limitations may be an order of magnitude or two less
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That's for militaries and governments, not for us. The way in which it works to prevent interception also works to prevent relaying... so unless you have a fiber line or laser link directly to whoever it is you are communicating with, it's useless as I understand it.
You mean like this, described in another HP paper from the quantum science group published in '03? :)
Intel has a good overview on what leakage is all about. Leakage has nothing to do with jumping wire channels, although the electric fields generated between one wire and another in small process geometries cause signal integrity problems such as noise and delay.
Because it doesn't have to actually work to get published - it just needs to be viably interesting (eg. not wrong) and have specific applications.
Remember, applied physics != engineering. It the engineering boys that expect that it works.