Branched Nanotubes Offer Smaller Transistors

Designadrug writes "Tiny tubes of carbon, crafted into the shape of a Y, could revolutionize the computer industry, suggests new research. The work has shown that Y-shaped carbon nanotubes are easily made and act as remarkably efficient electronic transistors - but the nanotransistors are just a few hundred millionths of a meter in size -roughly 100 times smaller than the components used in today's microprocessors."

Comments

Moore's Law.

[Quebec]

Each time some expert's saying that Moore's Law is about to hit a barrier,
there is something going on like those promising nanotubes.

Another one for Moore against those doomsday preacher like this one:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5112061.html

Re:Moore's Law.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they still need to develop an industrial process for putting billions of those things cheaply on a small chip. That will take decades, at the very least, and in the time the current CMOS chip technology will have advanced several times... Don't hold your breath.

Re:Moore's Law.

[slapout]

Hey, you could have your own law:

Quebec's law: "Each time some expert's saying that Moore's Law is about to hit a barrier,
there is something going on like those promising nanotubes."

Re:Moore's Law.

[LWATCDR]

Except one of the reason Moore's observation held is that ICs are so much easier to make then what they replaced. These new nanotubes may not scale to well for mass production.
Moore's law IS not a fundamental law of the Universe. It was an observation of a trend that has held up for a lot long than anyone expected.

Re:Moore's Law.

[ackthpt]

Hey, you could have your own law: Quebec's law: "Each time some expert's saying that Moore's Law is about to hit a barrier, there is something going on like those promising nanotubes."

Sorta like Slapout's Corollary: "Anytime something can go wrong, no matter how likely, something will eventually come along and make it actually work, defying all odds and logic."

i think metamoderation works something like that...

Re:Moore's Law.

[Anm]

Actually.. the sizes mentioned in the Moore's Law barrier article you linked to roughly equate to the "a few hundred millionths of a meter in size" (2/100,000,000 meters == 20 nano-meters ~= 16 nanometers). Since the barrier is over a decade away, the two articles aren't in conflict, as much as you would like to hope.

Anm

Re:Moore's Law.

[fbjon]

There was an article in Sientific American about making chips much smaller by letting water flow between the imprinting laser lens and the silicon wafer. The water changes the refractive index, so the lens can be better utilized, as I understand it, and apparently it's not particularly difficult either, since existing 193nm lithography can be used, and even surpass the planned 157nm lithography tech. Here's another article with some links.

Re:Moore's Law.

[jericho4.0]

Moore's law is over, or is Intel shipping a 10GHz cpu? Yes, we will probably get faster cores yet, but the days of reliable speed increases are done. Hence the move to multi-core.

Re:Moore's Law.

[amliebsch]

Moore's law applies to transistor counts per square inch, not clock speeds. You're thinking of the "Law of Marketing."

Re:Moore's Law.

[oringo]

Do you even know what Moore's law is? Even a highschool student can tell you that it has nothing to do with the MHz speed of the silicon, although theoretically as the widths of the gates shrink you can run the logic faster. Moore's Law simply states that the density of silicon chips doubles every 18 month.
On a sidenote, Intel's Netburst archicture has turned out to be a failure to reliably increase the PERFORMANCE of the CPU (ironically I'm using one right now), precisely because of the architecture's emphesis on higher clock rate. But other architectures, such as AMD64 and Power are rapidlly shrinking their die and consistently increasing performance.

Re:Moore's Law.

[iabervon]

It's actually a matter of economics more than anything else. The theory is available now for Moore's law to continue for a decade or two, and new theory seems to get worked out regularly; the fundamental limits are a long way off. What makes Moore's law relatively regular is that it takes a certain amount of development effort to get the new techniques into chips, and that rate of improvement is the minimum needed to get people to buy your chips.

Re:Moore's Law.

[Autonomous Crowhard]

So in other words the nanotube enabled computer I'm using now will be replaced with a nanotube based computer that is twice as fast in 18 months???

I thought the key implied part of "improving" was to actually have something to improve upon.

Re:Moore's Law.

[Spy der Mann]

and in the time the current CMOS chip technology will have advanced several times

DOH. There ARE already nanotube transistors using single nanotubes. ALREADY the work is done on integrating these on very large scale.

If they know how to attach a nanotube to a layer of silicon to make a transistor, don't you think they'l know how to attach a branched nanotube to make a full circuit?

Take a look at the industry. 2 years ago it was discovered that silver nanostructures were antibiotic. Today, LG gives us fridges with nano-silver coated surfaces.

This is not about one or two scientists making gradual discoveries. It's another gold rush. One man discovers a bit of gold, and thousands follow him. Companies are investing MILLIONS in nanotech R&D.

It was R&D that gave us miniature hard drives for your iPod, and flash memories. Don't you think that companies will compete and invest all they've got for the philosopher's stone of computing? Branched nanotubes are *JUST* what we've been searching for all these years. I bet you than in 10 years (or less), we'll be using nanotubes in our CPU's.

Re:Moore's Law.

[drakaan]

Now I have to go Google Slapout's Corollary...thanks for putting an end to any productivity for me today...

Re:Moore's Law.

[vertinox]

These new nanotubes may not scale to well for mass production.

Anything that can be manufactured by man can be scaled to mass production (like jet aircraft, complex chemicals, atomic bombs and ICBMs for example). It's just a matter of how much resources you are willing to put into it, and even then it might not be economical.

I think Moore's law will be sustanible if there is economic demand for faster chips. If they can't get the Hz faster they'll scale outwards (dual cores and parallel processing route)

Re:Moore's Law.

[drakaan]

So in other words the nanotube enabled computer I'm using now will be replaced with a nanotube based computer that is twice as fast in 18 months???

No, the nanotube-enabled computer you're using will be replaced by one with twice as many nanotubes per square mm in 18 months.

Re:Moore's Law.

[RicktheBrick]

I think that moore's law has already stopped and someone needs to get it going again. After all the billion bit chip was mass produced in 1999 therefore the 2 billion should have been in 2001 with the 4 billion in 2003 and the 8 billion in 2005. I just hope that they stop making processors with only one on a chip and make the duo processors as cheap as the single ones are today.

Re:Moore's Law.

[dmccarty]

I find your absolute faith in Moore's "Law"...disconcerting.

What Gordon Moore originally said was the underwhelming

The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year (see graph on next page). Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase.

(Don't believe me? Read it here instead.)

By Moore's statement we should be seeing chips with IC counts of 70 trillion (10^13), but the latest Pentium D has a transistor count of "only" 230 million (10^8). Moore was wrong by a factor of 10^5. That's not a law, or barely even an observation. That's horribly wrong even in astronomical terms!

Moore's law has been taken to mean everything from your local Best Buy rep telling you "megahurtz are doubling every year, man" to the Intel spin doctors saying "transistor counts increase annually." I guess Moore's Law falls somewhere in the middle.

The idea that we're marching exponentially towards infinite chip speeds with infinite transistor counts (infinitely small, no less) is just foolish. The fact is that we will eventually hit some limit. Once processor innovation stabilizes, software will have to as well. People will start looking for more innovative solutions in software than the current level of bloat, and that will be a good thing in my opinion.

Re:Moore's Law.

[Bender_]

If they know how to attach a nanotube to a layer of silicon to make a transistor, don't you think they'l know how to attach a branched nanotube to make a full circuit?

There is no known way to build large numbers of nanontube transistors with good yield. What can be done so far is attaching single nanotubes somewhere and measure lots of devices until you find a good one.

Remember: To build a state of the art CPU you have to produce more than 1e8 transistors with exactly 100% yield.

Re:Moore's Law.

[Stelminator]

bit != hz
hz = (clock) cycles per second
hz != calculations per second

so, even though clock speed hasn't been doubling in line with Moore's Law, it doesn't mean the number of calculations per second hasn't been. There have been other increases in speed; hyperthreading, dual core, faster FSB, and more on-die cache all affect the number of calculations that can be performed. The fact that we've been stuck at 3-4 Ghz for the last couple years doesn't mean that a 4 Ghz today can't perform twice as well as a 3 Ghz from two years ago.

Yes, I'm an Intel user. However, this even more proves my point that Ghz != speed, though there is a relationship. AMD chips' clock speeds don't seem to have as direct a relationship to the performance. So, even though those clock speeds might be slower than Intel's from 2 years ago, they can still have better performance than Intel's latest stuff.

Re:Moore's Law.

[PlacidPundit]

Moore's law IS not a fundamental law of the Universe. It was an observation of a trend that has held up for a lot long than anyone expected.

Which, curiously enough, is all science is in the first place. But point taken.

Re:Moore's Law.

[scholzie]

This is known as immersion lithography. Intel has kept it off its official roadmap because they're able to push their current technology to 45nm and possibly beyond. AMD on the other hand has started purchasing immersion steppers and it looks like they're trying to get them operational in production by 2006.

A few small corrections to your comment: it's not water, and there's no "flow". The fluid used is engineered to increase something called the "numerical aperture" of the lens (or, the NA). Typical fluids include ethylene glycol and certain other alcohols diluted with deionized water. In reference to the "flowing," the steppers simply pick up a bead of water and use it. When the wafer comes out of the stepper it's essentially dry.

One potential downside to this process is the sensitivity of the resist reaction to water. Unfortunately in order to work at the low end the wafers must be post-exposure baked immediately coming out of the stepper. This reduced throughput time since you can't do an entire lot of wafers at once unless you set up 25 hot plates.

Rochester Institute of Technology recently revealed that they have been able to push immersion lithography with high NA fluids to 31nm lines and spaces, which is only 2 generations from the proposed physical limit of silicon gate transistors (11 nm).

Re:Moore's Law.

[moviepig.com]

Moore's law is NOT a fundamental law of the Universe. It was an observation of a trend that has held up for a lot longer than anyone expected.

Indeed, Moore's law isn't as certain as sunrise... and even that will eventually run out...

But its longevity does suggest that more than a mere circumstantial trend may be at work... say, something closely related to the exponential growth of scientific knowledge. Nanotubes look like they'd fit that bill nicely.

Re:Moore's Law.

[ajs]

Moore's Law relates to the number of transistors in a given area, nothing more. Don't confuse Moore's law with clock speed (as you point out), calculations per second, or any other metric. Transistors per square inch. That's what ML is measured in.

Re:Moore's Law.

[LWATCDR]

Actually their are some fundamental laws of the Universe.
Like the value of pi, the law of conservation of matter and energy, and the line you are in is always moving the slowest.

Re:Moore's Law.

[Stelminator]

yup, you're right, after re-reading my post, it's not relevant to Moore's law.

I should have left it at "bit != hz".

I think I was trying to say: Even though clock speeds haven't been doubling every year, that doesn't mean that the computing "power" hasn't been advancing rapidly.

It still says nothing relevant to Moore's law, though.

Re:Moore's Law.

[ptbarnett]

The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year (see graph on next page). Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase.

You left out the rest of this quote:

Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years.

This quote was published in 1965. The Wikipedia article continues:

In 1975, Moore projected a doubling only every two years. He is adamant that he himself never said "every 18 months", but that is how it has been quoted.

An article linked from the Wikipedia article examines the historical growth of transistor counts in Intel processors since 1971:

http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/tuomi/inde x.html#t4

There are three groups of data points, in which the number of transistors double every 22, then 33, then 54 months. But, this data ends at the Pentium II, after which Intel stopped publishing transistor counts.

However, the transistor counts in subsequent chips have clearly increased rapidly, mostly due to larger cache memories.

Re:Moore's Law.

[ChrisMaple]

It's easier to understand, if you realize that the smallest thing you can resolve is proportional to the wavelength. Using a fluid medium reduces the wavelength in inverse proportion to the index of refraction of the fluid.

Re:Moore's Law.

[Chandon Seldon]

"the law of conservation of matter and energy" is an example of a really good theory. A large number of scientists would become extremely confused if it were ever disproven, but it's just another theory.

Even the "value of PI" isn't nessisarily a "natural law". Do you have some reason why you would claim that geometry has innate meaning, or is it just really useful for building working models?

Re:Moore's Law.

[scholzie]

True, but it's important to realize that immersion opens up doors not possible with standard methods. The main one being that, since the numerical aperture is the SIN of the half angle of the cone of diffraction orders able to be captured by a given lens, it should technically NEVER exceed 1.0 (-1 0). Since the diffraction orders are almost 100% captured by the bead of water due to total internal reflection effects, and subsequently amplified by focus, it's possible to get NAs higher than 1.0(!) - the physics of it is a little more dense, but the important bit is to see that tis allows you to exceed the CDs possible with standard imaging practices which have a gap between the lens and wafer.

Re:Moore's Law.

[PlacidPundit]

"the law of conservation of matter and energy" is an example of a really good theory. A large number of scientists would become extremely confused if it were ever disproven, but it's just another theory.

That's all true too. But my point was that the whole concept of natural laws is merely conjecture. We know the universe seems to be consistent, but why the universe is consistent can't be observed. That's why science and religion are not necessarily in conflict. Whether the universe is consistent because it just is (the Atheist view), or because everything is directly caused by the actions of a supremely consistent God (the Christian view), is irrelevant to questions of science.

Re:Moore's Law.

[LWATCDR]

If the law of conservation of matter and energy was disproved it would do a lot more than leave a large number of scientists confused.
There IS a huge difference between the laws of physics and Moore's law.
To change the laws of Physics all you would need to do is change the entire Universe.
For Moore's law to fail all it would take is for people to stop making smaller and smaller ICs.
Just another theory is a statement that I often hear when from people that want to bend reality to fit their view.
Theory 1. The universe was created in a single large event commonly called the big bang.
Theory 2. The universe flew out the nose of the great cosmic chicken.
As you can see not all theories are equal.

Re:Moore's Law.

[Chandon Seldon]

You do understand the basic concept of science, right?

1.) You observe what you're trying to describe.
2.) You come up with a theory that explains your observations.
3.) When the theory from step 2 is no longer good enough to make the predictions you want, go back to step 1.

Now, the "physical laws" have been doing pretty well at making predicitons for a while, but they aren't really "laws". They don't explain everything, and scientists continue to develop better and better models to explain things.

This all has very little to do with Moore's law. I doubt anyone is seriously using it to make accurate predictions about transistor size per time.

Re:Moore's Law.

[LWATCDR]

Yes I do.
I was using speaking in the context that Moore's law as not really based on science in general but was just an oberservation of a trend.

Re:Moore's Law.

[LWATCDR]

Damn I hate it when I hit submit when I meant preview.
I was speaking in context of Moore's law. Moore's law is NOT the same as one of the laws of physics. It is more of an economic prediction than say the law of Conservation of Matter and Energy. What I really have a problem with is the idea that all theories are equal. That is the argument that the Creationists tend to use when they start to spout really bad science and often out right lies. Being somewhat religious I find lieing for God to be offensive in the extreme as well as counter productive.

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[BlackCobra43]

What if I have a really, really powerful microscope?

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[Jerry Coffin]

What if I have a really, really powerful microscope?

At least if you're thinking of an optical microscope, the situation's basically hopeless even with current production technology. The problem is pretty simple: the finest detail you can hope to see with an optical microscope is determined by the wavelength of light you're using.

Visible light has wavelengths from about 400 to 700 nanometers. Current high-end chips are built with roughly 100 nanometer processes (90 for Intel, AMD, IBM, 110 for nVidia chips, etc.)

Carbon nanotubes are around 1 and a quarter nanometers -- about the wavelength of an X ray.

--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[aurb]

I already can see it: after inventing X shaped nanotubes, scientists were able to create the real artificial intelligence.

Machines which had only X-shaped transistors were female; and machines with half X-shaped and half Y-shaped transistors were male.

And then, the machines with more Y than X transistors came. They were evil maniacs. And they destroyed humans...

Why oh why they had to invent these Y shaped things...

Matters of Size and Scope

[ackthpt]

the nanotransistors are just a few hundred millionths of a meter in size -roughly 100 times smaller than the components used in today's microprocessors.

We're going to have a devil of a time soldering these things, not to mention fitting them with heatsinks...

Bandaru says the main remaining worry is how to manufacture complex nanotube-based circuitry reliably. Nonetheless, he is optimistic about the future of nanotube-based electronics.

"One must remember that for the Pentium chips which now have over 500 million transistors, the progenitor was a simple integrated circuit with two transistors in 1958," Bandaru says. "We are probably at the same stage with Y-junctions and the future looks good."

37 years? I can't wait that long! Where's the Fast Forward on these things?

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[KingSkippus]

37 years? I can't wait that long! Where's the Fast Forward on these things?

That's in interesting point. How many times a week do we see revolutionary new technology that either never comes out at all or that doesn't seem so exciting by the time it finally does because of advances in conventional technologies during the time in between?

I've just got a feeling that by the time we start buying computers with Y nanotubes, Microsoft will have patented the letter Y, so we'll have to call them lamba nanotubes or itty-bitty-wishbone-shaped nanotubes instead...

I guess I'm just wishfully hoping that there is a fast forward on at least some of these technologies.

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[ackthpt]

100 times as small means 100 times less necessary current per transistor. The question is, how much current can one of these things handle?

It's also Carbon, something regularly used for resistors (prior to film resistors.) Seems resistance and heat will be some kind of issue.

As to "how do you solder them," that's just stupid. You don't solder them, any more than you solder 100 million transistors in a Pentium.

Pentium and other chips are etched from an existing sandwich, IIRC, we're talking about growing a "chip" rather than chiseling the everything from a section of a wafer which doesn't look like a Pentium.

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[ackthpt]

I think you caught the Pentium bug. It's 47 years.

Apologies. The font on my LCD made the 5 look like a 6 and I was thinking that about fit in the time frame of early integrated circuits.

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[TripMaster Monkey]

It's also Carbon, something regularly used for resistors (prior to film resistors.) Seems resistance and heat will be some kind of issue.

Actually, carbon nanotubes are as conductive as copper...here's a nice resource .

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[Yocto Yotta]

"We're going to have a devil of a time soldering these things, not to mention fitting them with heatsinks..."

Yeah, I'm sure Intel, AMD, and IBM are going to keep the same amount of transistors as they have today, but decrease the physical size of the CPU casing by 100-fold . . . actually I think they'll likely stay the same size and increase transistor density 100-fold instead. Don't you think?

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[dnixon112]

Actually, just like the current trend indicates, reduced size of technology leads to great choice and options. We'll see tiny computers and large computers, cell phones and supercomputers. You can't say "they'll likely stay the same size" since we already have computers that vary greatly in size; that trend will continue.

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[ackthpt]

Actually, just like the current trend indicates, reduced size of technology leads to great choice and options. We'll see tiny computers and large computers, cell phones and supercomputers. You can't say "they'll likely stay the same size" since we already have computers that vary greatly in size; that trend will continue.

The other trend, I don't see many banter about other than the occasional reference to Bloat is that software will continue to exhaust whatever performance gains new circuit technology achieves.

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[Yocto Yotta]

Last time I checked, an Intel 286 processor circa 1988 and a 3700MHz Pentium IV processor circa 2005 were pretty close in size. Same goes for PPC and SPARCs . . . it's definitely not a size-factor change that would blow anyone's mind in the least.

While they could make smaller processors that make incremental (albeit somewhat large) gains with this technology, there would be no reason to shrink the CPU package size just because smaller is cuter. I almost think that you're refering entirely to the cases that your computer components go inside, not the internals themselves, but I'll give you more credit than that. Thank me later.

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[Yocto Yotta]

Whoops, I meant Intel 286 circa 1982. My ten-key h4x0rz skills are slowly declining.

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[budgenator]

Boy oh Boy is that something to think about when they talk about space elevators made out of carbon nanotubes, a lightening rod sticking 120 miles up into the sky and a thunderstorm is scarey stuff!

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[skelly33]

Transistor manufacturing technology has advanced several times in the last 47 years without resetting the product development clock. Carbon nanotube transistors represent yet another change in manufacturing technology of something that we know quite well how to use. Once we refine the technique, sophisticated applications for it are just around the corner. Thankfully in this case we don't need to unlearn.

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[ToasterofDOOM]

Even if they were resistant, more resistance == less current, and current is what really causes heat. If you look at the tiny resistors on your motherboard they have thousands to even millions of ohms of resistance, but you dont seem to have problems with them spontaneously melting do you?

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[Vitriol Angst]

I've already read about good techniques for this. Basically on the board you create sticky points and dip the board into the nanotubes like ice cream into a bowl of sprinkles. Lithography or bacteria or whatever could be used to create special adhesive sights to orient the nanotube. I'm guessing you could dope them with an iron molecule at one end. Sort out correctly oriented nanotubes. Put the lot into a strong magnetic field and create a thin film of evenly spaced particles by using an ultrasonic resonance frequency corresponding to the radius of the nanotube. You then create networks of connections by repeatedly adding adhesive points and dipping the board into a layer of oriented nanotubes.

The same iron-doping you use to orient the tubes (use gas-deposition for the iron, not the carbon) can be used to create a handle to add a "sticky point" on a nano-tube.

Better yet, create a uniform circuit structure and use some IBM technologies that allow for software to re-route logic gates (see the IBM patent on self-forming or healing CPUs).

Anyway, I want the right for Prior art on the patent. Even if this is a pretty obvious use of nanotubes. ;-)

Re:Matters of Size and Scope

[JLF65]

Well, you're HALF right. Coal won't cut glass, but diamond DOES lubricate (reduce friction). It's commonplace these days to diamond coat things to reduce their friction.

9nm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this is how Intel will get that 9nm process they said they'd have by 2009.

Re:9nm?

[ackthpt]

Maybe this is how Intel will get that 9nm process they said they'd have by 2009.

Intel have their hands full keeping up with and competing with AMD on existing technology.

I predict AMD will perfect the pod before Intel, and then we'll all be pwn3d as the carbon nanotubes replace our fleshy brains.

just call me Barney Google

And the best part?

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon we'll have cell phones we can lose *100 times* as fast!

Re:And the best part?

[matt4077]

Actually, Cellphone-Losing is a function of volume, not length. So size should decrease by a factor of 10000000 (100^3).

Re:And the best part?

[zippthorne]

That's a worst case scenario. It's far more likely to scale like the area since as yet we have no truely volumetric ICs.

So cellphone-losing (or my favorite, accidental washing & tumble dry) should increase by only a factor of 10k.

Re:And the best part?

[networkBoy]

"since as yet we have no truely volumetric ICs"

Ah, but we do!
While an individual die is not volumetric, there are provisions (and chips available) that stack up to 6 die in a 1.5mm package (4-flash & 2-(p)srams, or 2-flash 1-(p)sram & 1 processor). Thus the integrated circuit as a whole is volumetric.

-nB

Re:And the best part?

[zippthorne]

6 high and a million wide is still planar in my book. It's akin to stacking sheets of paper: enough and you've got a book, but two or three is still just a paper.

The die will be genuinly volumetric when a cutting plane in any direction through roughly the center intersects roughly the same order of magnitude worth of chip elements as any other cutting plane trhough the center.

Re:And the best part?

[drakaan]

Actually, you're both off a bit.

In TFA, the "100 times smaller" comes from the length of the nanotube transistor being 1/10th that of its silicon counterpart. Cellphone-losing should increase by no more than a factor of 100 (unless 3-d chips become commonplace).

Re:And the best part?

[networkBoy]

Then it would be too thick.
(even if you stacked no un-needed material)

The point is that volumetric solutions do not work for high heat densities, and are impractable from a package standpoint. There are some instances where a genuinely volumetric die could work _and_ make sense at the same time. In the case of cellular phones that is not the case. The package needs to be no more than 1-2mm thick in order to satisfy size requirements.

Also, aside from the substrate used for stiffening the die, the tickest part is the several layers of metal used to interconnect all the transistors in a meaningful way. A die will always be thicker than it is wide on a per transistor basis, unless you can come up with an interconnect technology more efficent than copper and without the oxidation issues (which are already bad enough).
-nB

Re:And the best part?

[phliar]

...volumetric solutions do not work for high heat densities, and are impractable from a package standpoint.

There is this volumetric processor that we call the vertebrate brain...

Today's state of the art -- mostly-linear flow of control, mostly-planar hardware -- will have to change for the next generation.

Re:And the best part?

[zippthorne]

I'm still more worried about cellphone washing as as long as it's lost but hasn't been washed yet, I can always convince a friend to call it.

Re:And the best part?

[networkBoy]

"There is this volumetric processor that we call the vertebrate brain.."

Which is relatively low heat density, and is impractable from a packaging standpoint. It needs way too much support harware :P
-nB

Bifurcated computers?

[mikeophile]

Would it look like a tree?

Would it make a great way to interface with tree-like neural structures?

For the lazy....

[Cmdr Coon]

Y-shaped nanotubes are ready-made transistors

Tiny tubes of carbon, crafted into the shape of a Y, could revolutionise the computer industry, suggests new research.

The work has shown that Y-shaped carbon nanotubes are easily made and act as remarkably efficient electronic transistors - the toggles used to control the flow of electrons through computer circuits.

But the nanotransistors are just a few hundred millionths of a metre in size -roughly 100 times smaller than the components used in today's microprocessors. They could, therefore, be used to create microchips several orders of magnitude more powerful than the ones used in computers today, with no increase in chip size.

Prab Bandaru and colleagues at the University of California in San Diego, and Apparao Rao, of Clemson Univeristy in South Carolina, both in the US, started by growing ordinary carbon nanotubes through chemical vapour deposition.

But they added iron-titanium particles to spur the growth of an extra nanotube branch attached to the main stem. The overall structure assumed a Y-shape and the catalyst particles were absorbed into the tubes at the branching point (see image).
Smaller still

Experiments then showed that applying a voltage to the stem of the Y precisely controls the flow of electrons through the other two branches. The switching capacity of these nanostructures is, in comparable to that of today's silicon transistors.

And, whereas current silicon transistors have been shrunk to around 100 nanometres, the Y-shaped nanotubes measure just tens of nanometres in size. Eventually, they could even be shrunk to just a few nanometres, the researchers suggest.

Previous efforts to construct transistors using carbon nanotubes have involved attaching the tubes to larger silicon elements. By contrast, the Y-junction transistors are made entirely from carbon nanotubes.
New era

"The transistor is fully self-contained," Bandaru told New Scientist. "The discovery heralds a new era of nanoelectronics in that functionality can be harnessed using all-carbon devices."

Bandaru says the main remaining worry is how to manufacture complex nanotube-based circuitry reliably. Nonetheless, he is optimistic about the future of nanotube-based electronics.

"One must remember that for the Pentium chips which now have over 500 million transistors, the progenitor was a simple integrated circuit with two transistors in 1958," Bandaru says. "We are probably at the same stage with Y-junctions and the future looks good."

Coming Soon: Time Travel

[DaSpudMan]

Looks like a Flux Capacitor to me.

Re:Coming Soon: Time Travel

[ZakuSage]

Great scott! You beat me to it. In doing so you could end up with an event that could unravel the very fabric of time, and destroy the universe! Granted, that's a worse case scenario, it'll probably be isolated to our own galexy.

Re:Coming Soon: Time Travel

[Marc2k]

Stop ripping me off, or I'll be forced to collect royalties.

Re:Coming Soon: Time Travel

[hobbesx]

Interesting that a demand for royalties comes from someone using a .gif...

and holy crap, I thought Scott Adams needed art classes! (I kid, I kid- I have no room to talk...)

Old News

[TripMaster Monkey]

This paper suggests that this sort of thing was being done 5 years ago.

From the paper:

Also, Papadopoulos et al introduced a Y-junction formation technique using branched nanochannel alumina templates (Papadopoulos, 2000).

Re:Old News

[jda487]

Making one 5 years ago and now knowing that it has semi-conductiong properities are two entirely different things.

Re:Old News

[TripMaster Monkey]

Before commenting, you might want to actually read, or at least skim, the paper I linked to in my original post.

Fom the paper:

The nanotubes are characterized by a chiral vector c = na + mb where a and b are vectors defining a unit cell in the planar graphene sheet and n and m are integers. Depending on chirality (i.e., the values of n and m), CNT can be either metallic or semiconducting. If (n-m)/3 is an integer, the nanotubes is metallic; otherwise it is a semiconductor (Dresselhaus, 1996).

100nm?

[trigeek]

Looking at the image with the article, this structure appears to be larger than today's transistors. Just about everyone is working on chips at 65nm, and the scale of the image indicates that the structure is approx. 100nm. Am I missing something here?

Re:100nm?

[sleepingsquirrel]

Am I missing something here?

Yes. The 65nm refers to the transistors gate length, which is only a small portion of the transistor. See some transistor cross-sections. Look at the first diagram, look at the red colored rectangle above and between the two blue regions labeled "S" and "D" (for "Source" and "Drain"). That red part is the gate.

Re:100nm?

[drmerope]

speaking of apples and oranges lets get something straight here. you're right 65nm says something about the gate length, but the measurements in the nanoscale technology also only covers the gate length. So while 65nm does not say much about entire area cost of a single transistor, nor does their 10s of nanometers say much about the entire area cost of a single nanotube transistor.

At the end of the day--even the article--admits that nanotechnology is only about a factor of two density improvement, but at the moment that is a useless factor because of the severe reliability issues and the failure of anyone to ever make something with the number of components (whether or not they work) comparable to a modern CPU.

And though they mention that the future nanotube devices will be smaller--so will silicon.

A P4 already incurs approximately a month of manufacturing from purification to bonding--that is with a manufacturing process that runs continuously 24 hours a day. Much of the process is highly parallel (lithography, oxide growth, implantation all occur over the entire wafer at once). Meanwhile... nanotubes are assembled in a mostly serial fashion.

Anyone seriously entertaining the idea that nanotubes are viable replacements for silicon techiques for CPUs from an engineering standpoint is seriously lacking awareness of the economics.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[NoImNotNineVolt]

decreasing the size of something doesn't increase the heat it produces, no. it makes it harder for said something to dissipate the heat, as it has less surface area. you might be overlooking the part of the blurb that said "are easily made and act as remarkably efficient electronic transistors". remarkably efficient almost implies that heat issues are decreased proportionally to the size. almost. so i'd be more inclined to guess that heat decreases by a factor of 100 before i'd say it increases.

PARSING ERROR

[amliebsch]

The switching capacity of these nanostructures is, in comparable to that of today's silicon transistors.

Does anybody have a guess as to what this means? Is this supposed to say that the switching capacity is comparable to today's silicon transistors (which would be good)? Or is it supposed to say that the switching capacity is incomparable to today's silicon transistors?

Either way, this sounds promising, provided that this increased switching capacity is a result not just of massively parallel switching but also faster switching.

In other news...

[CrystalFalcon]

"Today, scientists discovered diamond rings smaller than the size of an electron. It is theorized that this can revolutionize microprocessors, electronics, physics as we know it, and apple pie."

I'm getting a bit bored with these wide remarks saying profound discovery X has been achieved and that it may affect future production of [whatever], when it's so far from even prototype production that the PhD thesis on it hasn't even been written yet.

Can we get stories with a little more substance? Please?

Re:In other news...

[blake3737]

Apple Pie? What will those VILE CRETINS Think of changing next? They are all a bunch of terrorists out to change a favorite american dessert. "It's american as bifurcated carbon nanotubes"??? It's just NOT THE SAME MAN!!!

Re:In other news...

[Servo]

As anybody who's ever been to Wal Mart knows, microscopic diamond rings are in high demand.

Re:In other news...

[Kafka_Canada]

You moron, this is a science story, not an engineering story. Of course it's far from production, that's not what the point of the story is. So, yes, this is a story of substance, and you come off looking like a complete jackass.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Xaositecte]

Generally, the smaller an object, the larger it's surface area compared to it's mass, allowing heat to dissipate faster.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[debianlinux]

The evolution of design has proven to have a telescoping timeline in which subsequent discoveries and implementations take shorter and shorter periods to be realized.

A few issues

[convex_mirror]

In the near-term, we have to be able to sort CNTs by chirality and diameter much more accurately and cheaply than we can now - this is because the properties of CNTs change dramatically based on very slight variations in these properties.

Once we can do that reasonably well, there are a few approaches that look promising. For /. people who have access to scientific journals and want more in depth information on this subect - you can take a look at these articles:
P. G. Collins, et al., Science, 292, 706 (2001)
P. G. Collins, M. C. Hersam, M. Arnold, R. Martel, and Ph. Avouris, Phys. Rev. Lett., 86, 3128 (2001).
J. A. Misewich, et al., Science, 300, 783 (2003)

Math

[Anonymous Coward]

[B]ut the nanotransistors are just a few hundred millionths of a meter in size -roughly 100 times smaller than the components used in today's microprocessors

So, uh, they are a few hundred millionths of a meter in size -- or to put it in clearer terms, a few tens of nanometers in size. That'd put them in the 30-60nm range. Intel's currently making chips on a 90nm process, and intends to start making them on a 65nm process by the end of the year.

That's not a 1/100x size improvement

Re:Math

[staeiou]

When manufacturers state that they are making a chip based on a 90mm process, that is the distance between the gates. It's misleading, but it has to be because not all transistors are exactly the same size. Measuring the gate length is a way to have a standardized size that applies to the entire chip.

Re:Math

[Kjyn]

Since no one has put up a picture of a transiter layout, here's a link to one: http://www.bridgeport.edu/~matanya/images/ict2.gif

I'll try not to go into too much detail about it, but that's an NAND gate made up of 4 transistors. Two of them are green rectangles at the top with the yellow border around it. The other two is the green rectangle at the bottom with the green border rectangle around it. Aside from an inverter, this is about as simple a layout as you can get.

Now, onto the relative size. The white-bordered green squares are just metal connections for wires. The square's width and length must be at least twice the processing technology. So if using a 90nm process, they would be 180nm x 180nm. Counting the top tranistors, I get 6x14 steps each or 360nm x 1260nm

Using your 30-60 nm estimate, they could easily fit four transistors in a single connector! Many more into the entire area of the tranistor. 360*1260/ (60^2) is about 1200 transistors in the area of a single transistor. (Which doesn't take into account wires and routing) So I believe that their estimate of 100 times is in ballpark of being correct.

Laws of physics

[DigiShaman]

Moore's Law *will* hit the barrier. You cannot make something out matter smaller then an atom.

Next step wont be evolutionary, but revolutionary. This is when we get into quantum computing.

Re:Laws of physics

[PakProtector]

Moore's Law *will* hit the barrier. You cannot make something out matter smaller then an atom. Next step wont be evolutionary, but revolutionary. This is when we get into quantum computing.

I thought you couldn't make something out of matter smaller than an atom, eh?

I guess I'm going to have to go disappoint all those quantum computation researchers.

Re:Laws of physics

[hobbesx]

I guess I'm going to have to go disappoint all those quantum computation researchers

Why do I get the feeling that if you can find them, you won't be able to affect their momentum?

Re:Laws of physics

[mikael]

Then maybe we will have polarized light transistors (switching the polarization of light), with multiple light frequencies.

Re:Laws of physics

[kilodelta]

When you consider that we're just getting an inkling of what quantum effects are it will be quite some time.

For example, what happens when we start using the particles, or using the quantum states of those particles?

Re:Laws of physics

[JLF65]

+5 Insightful? Guess the moderators don't know anything about QC (or physics in general). In quantum computing, the phrase "quantum" has NOTHING to do with size. It has to do with using quantum INTERACTIONS. Quantum devices are currently only slightly smaller than silicon transistors. Quantum devices CANNOT be smaller than a single atom. Most useable quantum devices cannot be smaller than 10 to 100 atoms. It is the quantum mechanical interactions between the atoms that quantum devices exploit.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Itchy Rich]

...it makes it harder for said something to dissipate the heat,...

Smaller versions of the same design require less power to make them work, so less heat has to be dissipated. There's no net effect. Increased heat dissipation requirements come from higher power consumption.

How that will be effected by a change from current chip designs to these nano-tubes I don't know, but it's sure to take a long time for manufacturers to get a handle on the technology even once the basic science is sorted out.

Syntax?

[BlackCobra43]

Maybe the article MEANT a few hundred-millionths and not a few hundred millionths.

Re:Syntax?

[hobbesx]

The article mentions that they will be in the tens of nanometers for now, working toward the single digit nanometers in the future.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[ajs318]

What you have to remember about heat is that electronics only get hot because they are never perfect conductors nor perfect insulators {though we can make nearer-perfect insulators than we can conductors}. A perfect conductor will never get hot, no matter how much current you put through it, because the voltage drop across it will be nil and power = voltage * current. Nor will a perfect insulator, because this time, the current through it will be nil.

CMOS is based around two transistors, a P-channel FET which goes conductive when the gate is driven low, and an N-channel FET which goes conductive when the gate is driven high. The P-FET is trying to pull the output high and the N-FET is trying to pull it low. Both the gates are joined together, and this is the input. This is a simple NOT gate.

For a NAND gate, where any input 0 will drive the output to a 1, we have several P-FETs in parallel trying to drive the output high, and so many N-FETs in series trying to drive the output low. Each P-FET gate joined to an N-FET gate is one input. When they are all high, all the N-FETs turn on allowing the output to go low; when any one is low, the chain of N-FETs is broken, one or more P-FETs turn on, and the output goes high. For a NOR gate, where any input 1 will drive the output to a 0, we put the Ns in parallel and the Ps in series. You can make AND gates from NAND+NOT, OR gates from NOR+NOT, and any other combination you like. In fact you really don't need both NAND and NOR, because you can make either one out of the other; but it turns out they're equally as easy to make as each other in CMOS {not like many other technologies}.

In an ideal world this would never dissipate any power, since the input cannot be high and low at the same time so only one of the transistors will ever be on. In practice what happens is that the gates act like capacitors which take a finite time to charge and discharge. They do not switch instantaneously from conductive to non-conductive. So one stops conducting while the other is starting to conduct, and for a brief instant while the inputs are changing state both transistors are conducting a little. It's not a dead short circuit of course, otherwise something would give way ..... hopefully a fuse.

Now every time something changes state, you get a little pulse of heat. Which is why fast processors need cooling. Additionally, to make sure that the logic gate output has changed state before the next clock pulse, you need to make the gate capacitances charge up quickly -- which means using a higher voltage than you could get away with at lower speeds. But 2x more volts means 2x more amps means 4x more watts.

Smaller transistors should have less gate capacitance, and so be capable of switching more quickly.

Vacuum Tube Processors

[dunc78]

Yes, the size they are saying doesn't make sense. They say a few hunder millionths, which as you state would be a few hundred nm, then they go on to say 100 times smaller than the transistors used in todays microprocessors, which use 90 nm technology. Since when is .090/100 > 100? They must be talking about the oh so prevalent vacuum tube microprocessors of today.

Re:Vacuum Tube Processors

[nzkbuk]

It's because 90nm scale of microchips is given by the marketing dept and the 100nm of the carbon nanofibre Y tubes is given by the scientists.

While they are both measurements of length, they aren't measuring the same thing. The 90nm is measing the gate size where the 100nm is the size of the entire tube.
Take a look at http://www.micromagazine.com/archive/02/05/lead.ht ml The red parts are the gates, the entire picture is the transistor.

To put it in a more understandable way think if a 2l, 4 cylinder car engine. The marketing dept saying each cylinder is 250ml, the scientists are saying the entire engine (they are working on) would fit into 250ml of space.

Re:Vacuum Tube Processors

[dunc78]

Yes, ok, so the source and drain are another 90 nm each and we will say the well between two transistors is another 90 nm, that is still only 360 nm. If you look at the picture in the article, the tube appears to be about 500 nm in length. So tell me how this 500 nm carbon nanotube is 100s of times smaller than modern transistors?

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Xaositecte]

*Sigh*

No. Decreasing the size of something -increases- the surface area compared to the volume of the object, increasing it's overall ability to dissipate heat.

http://www.me.umn.edu/education/courses/me5221/Tut orials/Scaling/scaling.html%5BUniversity of Minnesota, Mechanical engineering]

Get your physics straight.

Diamonds in the dirt

[Silver Sloth]

Dateline 21st February 1953

Scientists today revealed the molecular structure of DNA. It is theorised that this may revolutionise medical research and forensic science (and posibly Apple Pie).

And I bet someone said back then all they've done is describe the molecule.

Nano Tubes

[devphaeton]

Yeah, but i still bet nothing switches data as warmly as vacuum tubes...... /me snickers, waits for it.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[jericho4.0]

Volume drops even faster, so in fact, heat dissipates much quicker.

Take a cube one unit on a side. Surface area = 6 square units, volume = 1 cubic unit. Ratio = 6. Now take another cube built with 8 of the former. Surface area = 24 square, volume = 8 cubic. Ratio = 3.

Stop talking about moores law.

[tod_miller]

It isn't a law, but a prediction made by viewing previous data, that hasn't even held, and gets modified to fit the results.

Now, check my journal on this, because I really wish people would shut up about moores law.

It takes credit from the chaps who did the hard thinking to get us to this point, and says, oh well, it was expected anyway.

Just, aaagh.

Re:Stop talking about moores law.

[susano_otter]

Well, it was expected that the hard thinking would get done, and would lead to solutions.

When those processors hit 5GHz...

[game kid]

...you're gonna see some serious shit.

Re:When those processors hit 5GHz...

[utopianfiat]

Okay, how the hell does a perfectly good Back To The Future joke get modded "Overrated" while this completely worthless, totally random comment gets nothing?

Quantum Computing

[inexion]

My quantum computer should be arriving soon - see you all on the other side of quantum mechanics!

check out this link, someone has finally captured light for use as 'quantum RAM' Link to NPR story

88mph

[thisisauniqueid]

I knew it, computers would pass light speed once they implemented flux capacitors using nanotechnology.

The great thing is, once your computer hits 88mph, you get the result before you even hit "Run".

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[phasm42]

True, but this doesn't help if you still have the same total quantity of heat -- the "density" of the heat is increasing.

Y?

[sleepingsquirrel]

Yes, but is it recursive?

Re:Bifurcated computers? OH Yeah, but more FLOWS

[milktoastman]

If you want something so fancy and seeded with the sci-fi honey, then more realistically I'm thinking we could expect those filamentary 'cell kites,' as they were, to offer you your interface calling.

Sounds great but...

[icemann476]

Sounds great but where am I supposed to find the 1.21 gigowatts of power it requires?! **holding a kite in a lightning storm**

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[NoImNotNineVolt]

i don't remember saying a single thing about volume. or comparing surface area against volume.

Get your reading skills straight.

Re:smallish?

[stevelinton]

They mean a few times 1/(100 000 000) meters (ie a few tens of nanometers.

Re:smallish?

[TMacPhail]

You've interpreted "a few hundred millionths of a meter" incorrectly. The correct way to do it is:
one hundred millionth of a meter = 1m/100,000,000 = 10nm
Not one hundred millionths of a meter = 100 * 1m/1,000,000 = 100um

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[NoImNotNineVolt]

what the surface area to volume ratio has to do with this i'm not sure. you wouldn't be making the false assumption that power is somehow proportional to volume, would you?

smaller than an atom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you can, what would you call a laser beam? Hello, photons... Anyway, QC has to date relied upon quite large molecular assemblies being banged at with NMR or similar (usually some form of heavy metal-like atoms in a carbon framework designed to allow tunable spin coupling interactions between the "data storage centers" embodied by the relatively complex orbital characteristics of the heavy atoms [s and p only scale to so many qubits using spins and the like, the larger qubit assemblies out there are starting to reach into the d and f block elements just to get enough manipulable orbital complexity]). Also... QC is not really a generably applicable method from what I've read on it so far. Sure, it allows some algorithms to run Way Fast (tm) [e.g. Schor's RSA breaker, currently at about the level of factoring "15" into "5" and "3", the smallest possible prime factorization which required a 7 qb computer; last I looked (this spring) people were publishing synthesis papers in the various chemical journals (nature, agewantde chemie, JACS, JInorg, JOrg, etc.) of up to 20-40 qb computing assemblies...], but it's not like dioctocyclo-cuprous-wtf-inol in your million dollar NMR machine or whatever is going to be efficient at inherently Von Neumann-esque things like running your bash shell. ;) In other words, much like a highly tuned vector machine (Cray, etc.), it'll be really insanely great at some tasks and sloooow at others, so it'll probably end up as a component in a larger computing assembly rather than a standalone. Of course, all this tech is at least 20 years out from market availablity (at least!), so who knows what will happen.

(I am a chemist, though my day job is web applictions dev. *shrug*)

Re:smaller than an atom?

[ChrisMaple]

I'd call a laser beam (wavelength ~400 nm) bigger than an atom (~0.1 nm).

Mod parent informative

[quanticle]

This is the best summary explanation of IC design that I've read in a long time.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Xaositecte]

*WHOOSH*

that's my point, flying past your head.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Kythe]

This is a very good summary.

One additional factor that needs to be added, though, is that as MOSFET transistors scale towards smaller and smaller features, leakage current becomes a larger and larger problem. Basically, at extremely small sizes, quantum effects start to become significant, and electrons randomly tunnel from one end to the other.

The larger the leakage current, the more is lost to heat.

It remains to be seen how large a problem leakage current is with the new tube transistors. If it's not a big problem, then one of the major obstacles towards reducing feature size on integrated circuits will have been addressed.

It's all in the details, whatever they are

[Ancient_Hacker]

it would be nice if TFA had a few facts comparing these to current transistors. Just being "small" isnt good enough. Quite a few things have to also be in the right range to make them competitive, such as voltage swing, current gain, switching speed, reliability, feedthrough and feedback capacitance, and probably more. And it's a bit presumptuous for anybody to extrapolate these things along the same improvement curve as transistors and IC's.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Spy der Mann]

Remember nanotubes can act as near-superconductors. Remember the article on Quantum Wires? The leakage will be negligible. Plus, who says nanotube CPU's will have to transport millions of electrons to do a computation? Maybe a few thousands will do the work.

Bzzzt!!!!

[gr8_phk]

"In the near-term, we have to be able to sort CNTs by chirality and diameter much more accurately and cheaply than we can now"

I doubt bulk production and sorting of nanotubes is going to be of much value. Suppose there IS a particular type that's really great for making circuits. How then do you deposite them and connect them into a circuit? And that will need to be done with individual tubes, not bulk - this article mentions the tubes are about 1/10 the size of present transistors, so if you lay down a bundle of tubes it's no benefit. ITRS - the semiconductor roadmap - goes down to 22nm. Unless you can physically assemble a trillion individual nano-tubes into a circuit sorting will be irrelevant to the electronics industry. Growing tubes and these Y-thingies *in place* will likely be the only way they ever get used to build computers.

That's not to say bulk production and sorting doesn't apply to other things. Some applications want bulk quantities of the same kind of tube. I think the space elevator folks would like that for their ribbon. IIRC there was some talk of super conductors too.

Forking

[Skeptical1]

If you come to a fork in the tube - take it. And I've heard people say forking was a bad thing.

Scale on Picture?

[dunc78]

I don't think this is correct, because if you look at the picture in the article it clearly has a scale that indicates 100 nm as being approximately 1/5 the width of the picture. Which points to the orginial interpretation of (100/1000000) m

Factual errors in w/u

[nanoakron]

>>but the nanotransistors are just a few hundred millionths of a meter in size -roughly 100 times smaller than the components used in today's microprocessors

100 millionths of a meter in size = 100 microns

These ain't no 'nano' transistors I've ever heard of.

Latest P4: 65 nanometers (or approximately 0.065 microns)

So these aren't even smaller than the components used in today's microprocessors.

This article was written by monkeys. But what do you expect when you pay peanuts?

-Nano.

Re:Factual errors in w/u

[coolGuyZak]

This article was written by monkeys. But what do you expect when you pay peanuts?

Elephants.

Again and Again

[beyond_the_blue]

They've been promising us new processors with new and radical technology for a while now. First it was crystals, then organic structures, and now nanotubes.

Until the HAL 9000 is telling me with regret that he "can't do that," I won't be convinced.

Don't get me wrong...

[teutonic_leech]

... I'm all over nanotech - have myself been attending Foresight Institute meetings regularly for the last decade. BUT, since the early nineties I've seen dozens of research papers promising new types of transistors and thus far the problem seems to be mass manufacturing of any of these approaches. What works in the lab is one thing - making a commercial product is another. So, don't get your hopes up to 'upgrade' to a nanochip any time soon ;-) Nevertheless, we're heading in the right direction - this type of research caters to the VC community which is already investing heavily into privately funded nanotech related companies. Heaven knows - here in the U.S. we desperately need this type of research, may it be academically or privately driven. China, Japan, Korea, India, etc.. are catching up quickly and we already lost the race in the biotech and genetic engineering department.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me start by saying I am an electrical engineer:

Even if you have perfect conductors and insulators you will still burn power. The gate of every transistor is a capacitor. And you can imagine that the power supply is also a big capacitor. Just transferring charge from one capacitor (the power supply) to another one (the gate of a transitors) uses up energy, even if you have superconductors and perfect insulators. The following math helps:

The energy stored in a capacitor is expressed as E=0.5*C*V^2

So lets take a capacitor which is charged to V=1 volt, and a capacitance of 1 F (this is a silly example but the math is now trivial)

The energy in that capacitor is that 0.5*1*1^2 = 0.5 Joules.

Lets connect it to another capacitor of equal capacitance, with a superconducting wire. The total amount of charge stays constant (Q=CV) So with two capacitors each will have half the voltage. That means we now have 2 capacitors of 1F size with 0.5V on them. Whats the energy now:
0.5 * 1 * 0.5^2 = 0.125 Joules each. Together that only makes 0.25 Joules.

But we started with 1 Joule... Where did the power go? Just charging and discharging something means we move charge from one place to another which takes energy to do so.

So as long as you are moving charge around in a chip, even if you have superconductors, you will still burn energy.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[NoImNotNineVolt]

No. Decreasing the size of something -increases- the surface area compared to the volume of the object, increasing it's overall ability to dissipate heat.

ok, this is apparently more difficult for you to comprehend than it should be. the statement of yours that i'm quoting is a denial of something i did not say. it implies that i said something along the lines of "decreasing the size of something decreases the surface area compared to the volume of the object, decreasing it's overall ability to dissipate heat."

first off, it's "its", not "it's".

second, i made no claims whatsoever as to the surface area to volume ratio of said object, because i realize that there's other things that affect the situation. like the efficiency of the device. which is why i specifically focused on that aspect, as the blurb made mention of the fact that these y-junctions "act as remarkably efficient electronic transistors". if the device doesn't produce any significant heat, the rate at which heat is dissipated (which is dependent on the surface area to volume ratio you're so fond of) is largely irrelevant. clear?

Easy on the buzzer.

[convex_mirror]

I'm not suggesting that this is the most pressing problem - just that it is the most immediate problem. CNTs go from being very conductive (nearly superconductive) to semi-conductor based on a few tenths of a nanometer difference in diameter. This is the model for current generation CNT transistors They are being used to connect source and drains - if you don't have good control over whether it is a superconductor or a semi-conductor you have big problems. I agree that the more futuristic stuff will involve much more precision fabrication - but anyone who claims to know what stuff will look like in 20 years, or even what the major issues will be in 20 years is very likely full of it.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[thesaintar]

"It's not a dead short circuit of course, otherwise something would give way ..... hopefully a fuse. " Fuse: Device designed to make your whole computer burn to pieces while keeping your house's electrical installation fine.

Robert Frost

[threaded]

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Re:Robert Frost

[Urusai]

Since 0 is fatter than 1, we can better utilize bandwidth by only transmitting 1s by having unary processors. This would also obviate the need for branching and so we would not have to be subject to poet laureates lauding tiresome bohemian platitutes. BTW, the world does end in fire, Bob.

I did.

[fbartho]

They're called Buckyballs... have the general shape of a soccer ball with an atom at each of the vertices, and bonds along each of the edges

In other news

[jurt1235]

The discovery of Y-shaped nanotubes made water searchers more convinced that using an Y-shaped branch from a tree is the best approach possible.

Bitch and a half

[Brandybuck]

These nanotube transistors are very cheap to make... but they're a bitch and a half getting them to the right spot on the chip and a bugger making them stay there afterwards!

do more with less

[wimp_org]

Now that you mentioned SCIAM.
There is an article in the august issue of Scientific American about magnetologic gates. This mentions that instead of making transistors smaller so you can put more of them in the same space. You could also try achieve the same functions using less elements.

magnetologic gates are based on the MRAM technology. With some modifications the designs for MRAM can be used to create logic gates that are much more efficient and powerfull then CMOS based transistors.
With only 1 magnetologic gate you could create a AND, OR, NOR or NAND function. with 2 gates you can create a XOR function with would require 8 to 14 CMOS transistors. The 'full adder', the most used unit in a processor used to add two binary inputs, can be created with only 3 gates instead of 16 CMOS transistors.
So using magnetologic gates you can achieve the same kind of processing power improvement without using smaller units.

These magnetologic gates have some other advantages. They are non-volatile so they remember/store the result of the last calculation performed and reading out this value does not delete the information. This means that the overall calculation can be performed faster and it also enables parallel or clockless execution of operations.

Magnetologic gates can be reprogrammed like FPGA's. But unlike FPGA's switching between different functionalities takes just billions of a second. This ability to morph (which is the main focus of this article) radically reduces the amount of transistors needed in a processor. Since all function are hardwired in a normal CMOS processor, at any given time only a few percent of the transistors are actually used. If you could change the function of your elements with every operation, you could perform the same scala of different funtions with just a few elements.

If this technology will progress it could bypass the miniaturization efforts.

Let's Get Small Again

[Doc Ruby]

"the progenitor was a simple integrated circuit with two transistors in 1958 ... [w]e are probably at the same stage with Y-junctions"

Intel debuted the 4004, the first commodity microprocessor chip, in 1971 with 2300 transistors. That's 13 years, during which we had a space race (and Minuteman missile program) to stimulate investment. Today we have $trillions in returns on chip investment as stimulus, as well as an existing investment/manufacturing/marketing infrastructure. As well as highly useful micron-scale chips and software for design. So perhaps we're looking at a breakthrough "nanoprocessor" sometime earlier than 2028.

Not Old News

[k98sven]

Creating a Y-junction nanotube is 5 years old. But the news here isn't that they created a Y-junction nanotube.

The news here is that they created a Y-junction nanotube with a metal particle at the junction which caused it to function as a transistor.

Single molecule transistor

[Easy2RememberNick]

A single molecule transistor would be way smaller than the nanotube one.

http://www.physorg.com/news4345.html

Meanwhile

[Julian Morrison]

Senior figures in the Bush administration were in talks with scientists, to see if a way could be found to fit these "naked" transistors with trousers.

Re:Meanwhile

[StikyPad]

Senior intelligence officials are quoted as saying, "It was just supposed to be a harmless joke. Nobody thought the President would actually believe Iran was stockpiling trousers." Iranian officials, however, are not laughing.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[jericho4.0]

No, just making the point that if you heat something tiny to 100 degrees, and heat something large to the same, that the small thing will cool much faster.

Re:Obligatory....

[Kehvarl]

You mean like an integrated circuit?

Re:The question is...

[narcc]

That would be news: Linux defies basic mathematics by running on a single transistor. Linus Torvalds suspected terrorist.

why neurons

[Cloudface]

If each carbon "y" is less than neuron-sized/ then is each branching neuron capable of being carbonized?/ And if virtual e-e.coli are not-yet-there/ Is a y-carbon e-neuron less-so or Moore?

"100 times smaller"

[danjonwig]

What does that mean? 1/100 the size?

Quebec's Law? Hofstadter's Law!

[nil0lab]

Yo! Give Dougie a credit!

Quebec's Law? Hofstadter's Law!

[nil0lab]

Yo! Give Dougie a credit!

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[JLF65]

Incorrect. The same design takes the same amount of power to work regardless of size. As you shrink the size, you run into physical problems that FORCE you to decrease the power, even though it makes the design work WORSE (reduced error margins).

Prime example: electromigration of aluminum. As you decrease the size while keeping the applied voltage the same, Al atoms start to migrate - i.e., move in the applied field. After enough time passes, enough Al will have moved to create breaks in the line, or possibly shorts to other lines. There are two ways to combat this: decrease the voltage (which decreases the power), or use something else that requires higher voltage potential differences to migrate (more expensive). It's one of the prime reasons core voltages have dropped as transistors got smaller.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[JLF65]

It sounds funny when you put it that way, but it's the truth. Fuses and circuit breakers are not there to protect your electrical devices. They are there to protect the other people on the same power grid from your electrical devices. When you dump a soda on your TV set, the rest of the neighborhood doesn't go dark.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

no no no no

[uptoeleven]

this is all digital, remember?

That said I'm sure someone will come out with gold-plated nano-tubes which are somehow better than the standard ones...

Heat

[chrismg2003]

The thing holding us back from faster processors is not the ability to make them smaller but the ability to cool the smaller components. To make a small processor work we need to make it work with less energy so it generates less heat...the idea of making the components small to make it faster is over now...we can make them plenty smaller, we just can't cool them. When you put that many transistors in one place not only do you generate more heat because of the added energy (and resistance) of traveling through the resistors but you also decrease the surface area that you can cool off of and thus increase the heat even more.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[phage434]

The dissipation of energy is only necessary when you have no inductors. You can move charge from one node to another if you have an inductor to store the energy as magnetic field. Adibatic logic allows logic which dissipates (in the limit of slow operation) zero energy.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[ChrisMaple]

Most of the power dissipation occurs in the transistors, not the wires. The power is dissipated more because capacitance is being charged through the resistance of the transistors, than because of simultaneous conduction ("shootthough").

Although better conductivity in both wires and transistors would be helpful (people cool CPUs to accomplish this), too much can be a bad thing. With no resistance, circuits would ring badly, causing high instantaneous voltage and gate breakdown.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[phage434]

In an ideal world, this circuit would still dissipate energy. Overlap power is (relatively) a small contiibutor to total dissipation. Most of the dissipation comes from charging and discharging the capacitances of the circuit. This dissipation is C V**2 F, independent of the pullup/pulldown overlaps. C V**2 F dissipation is avoidable with charge recovery techniques using adiabatic charging and discharging techniques (which requires inductors, on or off chip).

Is this all just hype?

[yellekc]

I hope to one day actually see products using nanotubes, but I sometimes feel as if nanotubes are becoming the snake-oil of the 21st century. Promising to revolutionize integrated circuits, create indestructible synthetic fabrics, cure impotence, heal the blind, or whatever other applications someone can write a little press release about. I am almost getting sick of hearing about all this research, call me when they actually are mass producing real products and quit with all this nanotube hype.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[H0D_G]

A nanotube is 100% efficient at letting an electric currrent through, ie less heat

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Xaositecte]

There's a mark twain quote I'd love to bring out right now about focusing on Grammar. I know full well I've made more mistakes than that in just these few posts, no points for pointing out the easy ones. :P.
"
Your claim was "decreasing the size of something doesn't increase the heat it produces, no. it makes it harder for said something to dissipate the heat, as it has less surface area."

I pointed out that the surface area alone is irrelevant. It's the ratio of surface area to volume that matters in heat dissipation.

The fact that you never said anything about that ratio -is- my point.

I'm not even arguing about the second half of your comment.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[NoImNotNineVolt]

The fact that you never said anything about that ratio -is- my point.

so then you see why i'd take issue with your emphatic denial of that which we both agree i did not say anything about. you started your response with "No."

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[ajs318]

..... which is why you should always use the correct fuse for the appliance. That way you will never go wrong.

If you insist to use the same power lead for your kettle {about 2kW - needs 13A fuse in the plug} and your printer {less than 100W - needs 3A fuse in the plug} then you deserve what happens.

Switched-mode power supplies can cause "fuse fatigue" in 3A fuses, making them blow for no obvious reason. This is because a switched-mode PSU contains a big electrolytic capacitor which charges from the mains via a bridge rectifier. If you turn on the wall switch near the peak or the trough of the mains, then a very large current flows for a very short time {an empty capacitor is almost a short circuit, but it doesn't stay empty for long}. Of course the same thing happens with series-wound electric motors, which draw a very high current when stationary and settle down once they have reached speed.

In general, use a 3A fuse for anything that doesn't either get hot for a living or rely on a big electric motor; a 5A fuse for up to a kilowatt; and a 13A fuse for anything over a kilowatt. And make sure the cable will withstand enough current to blow the fuse. 0.5mm2 is good for 3 amps, 0.75mm2 for 5 amps {up to 10 amps if shorter than 2m.}, 1.0mm2 for 10 amps {up to 13 if shorter than 2m.} and 1.25 or 1.5mm2 for 13 amps.

Of course, fuses inside appliances also should be properly rated. Take special care, because there are two types of appliance fuse; Fast-blow {which as the name suggests blow fast in the event of too much current flow} and Anti-surge or Time-lag {which are designed to withstand brief surges and only fail in the event of a sustained overcurrent}. Generally use T on the primary side of a transformer and F on the secondary side. Sometimes also, a resistor is used to limit current flow from the mains to a few milliamps: if you ever need to replace this resistor, it must be a metal film resistor {which always fail open circuit} and not a carbon composition resistor {which, rather counter-intuitively, can fail short-circuit!}; although, since hardly anybody uses carbon composition resistors nowadays, this warning probably is less important.

Re:size vs heat in 50 years

[Itchy Rich]

...makes the design work WORSE...

It makes the design work "less well".

I understand what you're saying about voltage, but a cmaller chip requires less current. Unless you increase the voltage, the power required decreases... Ohm's law.