NASA Building Massively Heat-Resistant Chips

coondoggie writes "NASA researchers have designed and built a new circuit chip that can take the heat of a blast furnace and keep on performing. Silicon carbide (SiC) chips can operate at 600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit where conventional silicon-based electronics — limited to about 350 C — would fail. The new silicon carbide differential amplifier integrated circuit chip may provide benefits to anything requiring long-lasting electronic circuits in very hot environments such as jets, spacecraft, and industrial machinery. In particular, NASA said SiC applications will include energy storage, renewable energy, nuclear power, and electrical drives."

Comments

Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This gives an update for my macbook pro.

Re:Great idea

[Duhavid]

No no, it is for retiling the outside of the shuttle.

Re:Great idea

[Architect_sasyr]

No no... they are going to put it into Dell Laptops and bring back the old battery model's ;)

Re:Great idea

[ericartman]

Nope,
NASA knows we are all going to hell in a handbasket and wants to be ready. Either that or we are going to Venus, or is that the same place?

Cart

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a quick tip: If you can tell what he meant, shut the fuck up!

Re:Great idea

[solitas]

>> No no, it is for retiling the outside of the shuttle.

No - like everything else NASA makes, they can't take being hit by foam insulation.

Re:Great idea

[lababidi]

Why don't they make the whole shuttle out of these chips?

Re:Great idea

[Gigaflynn]

my dad might be interested in this for his "wear debris monitor"

Re:Great idea

[kiracatgirl]

"When" in doubt, you mean.

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it then that you're a proponent of ignorance, and opposed to the idea of learning from your mistakes?

Re:Great idea

[An ominous Cow art]

We're heading to Venus, and still we stand tall, because maybe they've seen us, and welcome us all. Though I would think that would be an ESA mission, and not a NASA one...

Re:Great idea

[Varun Soundararajan]

This is not funny, but the truth. My MacBook Pro doubles up as an iron box. I usually leave my Macbook on the previous night on the bed above a cloth, the next day, its cleanly ironed. If the cloth was flimsy, take a guess, it becomes a glamorous dress too :D..

--
~Sig();

Re:Great idea

[tehcyder]

Here's a quick tip: If you can tell what he meant, shut the fuck up!

If you want to come across as a semi-literate fuckwit that's your choice, but don't expect to be taken seriously.

Re:Great idea

[PingPongBoy]

hell in a handbasket

Over the next billion years, the sun will expand a bit, maybe enough to roast us. And numerous other bad things in the interim will prompt us to blow this popsicle stand. None to soon to be building better spacecraft.

Too Bad

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Its too bad, we could have used this when the Pentium 4 Prescott came out...

Re:Too Bad

[uolamer]

my P4 Prescott 3.2ghz still running quite well in my living room.. I keeps the room nice and warm too, in the winter i have to overclock it to 3.9ghz to keep from turning on the heater tho..

imagine the possibilties

[JazzyMusicMan]

As I read all I could think about was...overclocking

Re:imagine the possibilties

[Falstius]

Unfortunately, the metal interconnects would probably melt. They're probably doing all of the interconnects with doped carbide, making this chip very slow (or power hungry). Its a shame when your CPU starts dripping metal from running folding@home.

Re:imagine the possibilties

[jank1887]

no interconnects. this is not a processor. it's a chip. likely a single transistor the size of the silicon in your CPU. wirebonding typically platinum for very high temp packages. al-al or au-au if not quite as severe. other options available below that.

Re:imagine the possibilties

[Xiph1980]

how 'bout Tungsten (W)...
melts at 3683K... should be enough.

Re:imagine the possibilties

[FuzzyDaddy]

Tungsten is used in the current Aluminum metal via process, because it's very good at filling holes. (See Wikipedia for a reference.

I don't know if it's used for copper interconnects (I've been out of that business for years). It might work pretty well - the resistivity is twice that of Aluminum, which will slow down your interconnect performance some.

Re:imagine the possibilties

[Iron Condor]

it's a chip. likely a single transistor

Help me out here - what part of "differential amplifier" in the summary is ambiguous?

Re:imagine the possibilties

[kingsean]

Tungsten is used in the current Aluminum metal via process, because it's very good at filling holes...

Yes but I hear that NASA has also subcontracted a few chemical companies in order to produce a new Al-based compound that will react in a smiliar fashion with the SiC. My guess is the newly discovered but still somewhat volatile Ronjereminium (RJM). Your guess is as good as mine, though.

Re:imagine the possibilties

[Falstius]

The GP facetiously (I hope) mentioned overclocking. I responded facetiously in turn. As a differential amplifier however, it does need at least 2 transistors (and 3 resistors) for a very very basic and crappy amplifier. Those transistors and amplifiers will need to be connected. They will also need to be connected to whatever leads there are to the outside world. For such a simple circuit, the price of using relatively resistive interconnects such as doped Poly-SiC is relatively small. In a microprocessor it would be very very high.

Tungsten probably would work, but most metals used in ICs start to react chemically with their surroundings when the temp is over 450C or so.

That sound you hear

[SpiffyMarc]

is hundreds of champagne corks popping simultaneously at the AMD campus.

Re:That sound you hear

[edwardpickman]

is hundreds of champagne corks popping simultaneously at the AMD campus.

That's 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit not Celsius. You're still gonna need one hell of a heat sink.

Re:That sound you hear

[RealGrouchy]

Yes, but that's because the heat causes the champagne to expand to beyond the critical pressure.

- RG>

A=A if you ignore B

[BadAnalogyGuy]

If I have 1 apple in basket A and 1 apple in basket B, how many things do I have, altogether?

Sure, you can withstand 600 degrees of heat, but what about the heat generated internally? If that heat can't escape, you're looking at temps much hotter than your 600 degrees blast furnace.

20 years ago, I wouldn't have even thought to question NASA's work, but their track record lately invites such abuse.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[smashin234]

"20 years ago, I wouldn't have even thought to question NASA's work, but their track record lately invites such abuse."

You underfund the agency and expect huge rewards? We dumped so much more money into NASA back in the days of the spacerace and we as a society benefited from hundreds of technologies that today we take for granted.

I am not saying NASA shouldn't be watched for spending....but you can't expect an agency to perform if you don't give it money.

This may not be a huge accomplishment, but being able to withstand higher heat means that you can keep your current cooling apparatus the same and simply allow the chip to run faster (and hotter). Yes, the heat still needs to escape, and there may be other problems with implementation, but you have to take that first step first.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[Gumbytwo]

From TFA: "This new capability can eliminate the additional plumbing, wires, weight and other performance penalties required to liquid-cool traditional sensors and electronics near the hot combustion chamber..."

...what about the heat generated internally? Hmm, what's the next step down from liquid cooling? Gee, I don't know, maybe a heat sink?

20 years ago, I wouldn't have even thought to question NASA's work, but their track record lately invites such abuse. With that kind of a statement and accompanying "analysis," I wouldn't start.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[afidel]

More importantly none of the components around chip can survive such temperatures. For instance I don't know of any high K dielectric that would survive, making the motherboard break down. Also there isn't an solder that can take that kind of heat so the chip would just fall out. It's great making one component robust but a computer is a lot more than one component. I guess if you just need a high temp microcontroller this is useful but I don't think it solves a lot of general case high temp problems.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[jank1887]

congratulations. you have no idea what you're talking about.

high temperature boards are ceramic (AlN, Al2O3, HTCC, DBC, etc.) seeing as how they're fired from 1-2000C, they'll be ok.

silver-glass die attaches are okay up to 400-450C. Beyond that, you have high-temp brazes, AuIn, AgAuGe, AgCu, oh and AuNi ok up to 950C.

Circuit!= computer. Chip != microprocessor. SiC chips = power electronics switch or sensor components. sure, you could build a processor out of these, but you could also just go back and build a Pentium out of vac.tubes.

It's a wide-bandgap semiconductor material that is being extensively developed for specific power or harsh environment applications. There currently are no MOS devices (used in your PC). Switching speeds typcially in the kilohertz range, for power conditioning. That chip is a single transistor, about the size of the piece of silicon in your PC. Finally, silicon's only okay to 150-200C. The article should have said 350F, not 350C.

read and learn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_semiconductor_device

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[BadAnalogyGuy]

you could also just go back and build a Pentium out of vac.tubes

I gotta tell you. I just did this. What a difference! It has this quality that's hard to describe. A kind of warmth that I just don't get from silicon transistors.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[raduf]

Funny thing is, vacuum tubes are actually better quality-wise. Something to do with response times and stuff. Fiability however is crap, plus the little problem of a few million bulbs in the room...

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[sssssss27]

I gotta tell you. I just did this. What a difference! It has this quality that's hard to describe. A kind of warmth that I just don't get from silicon transistors.

You haven't used a Pentium 4 then.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[afidel]

Uh, how does any of that contradict what I said? I said none of the components needed for a modern high speed computer are going to survive at those temperatures and you pointed to some components that can at MUCH lower performance levels, well duh. I believe I said I guess if you just need a high temp microcontroller this is useful but I don't think it solves a lot of general case high temp problems which is EXACTLY the kind of application you describe. Way to jump down my throat over nothing....

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[FuzzyDaddy]

That warmth is the 10^8 Watts of heat put out by the 10^8 vacuum tubes.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[f8l_0e]

You can actually see the SSE units around the Great Lakes!!! http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/image/earth_night.jpg

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[khallow]

Adjusted for inflation, NASA's funding is about half what it was in 1966. And about 50% greater than the trough in the late 70's. The current budget is over 16 billion USD this year. That's a lot of money. We can whine about how underfunded NASA is. But until they start spending their money better, it's not going to change. About a quarter of that is spent on the Shuttle and ISS. Namely, an obselete launch vehicle with huge overhead and an underperforming research station in LEO that would be underperforming even if it were complete and fully manned.

My take is that unless NASA (and US Congress) makes major changes in how it does things, then any funding throws good money after bad. For starters, I believe NASA should use US commercial launch vehicles (Delta IV heavy, Atlas V heavy, Falcon 9, Minotaur, etc) rather than develope its own. Nix the Shuttle, Ares 1, and discontinue the ISS construction. There might be a use for the ISS in orbit though maintenance is rather pricy (over a billion a year in USD last I heard). Expand NASA's unmanned part. I grant that there's certain things that become easier to do with heavy launch vehicles (eg, Ares V) so it might be worthwhile to develope such a vehicle. Personally, I doubt that is necessary. If NASA were to encourage investment in US commercial launch ("seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space" is Congress's first stated directive for NASA) rather than sabotage it.

NASA could run a real space program on its current funding. The money it squanders on various make work projects (eg, all those potential shuttle replacements that never happened), the pointless manned space projects (the Shuttle and ISS), and the expensive R&D on a rocket that can be provided by the commercial world (the Ares 1) could buy a lot of commercial launches.

Not what we need

[athdemo]

A bunch of geeks eventually running hardware at thousands of degrees in their cluttered, and probably somehow very flammable, rooms.

I'll be back.

[dwater]

...or did he come back? I forget...last one I saw was him dropping into a blast furnace.

Re:I'll be back.

[Yoozer]

Yeah. This research was obviously funded by Skynet.

Damnit.

Oh well, I'll just wait for part 5 of the series.

Re:I'll be back.

[Anonymous Coward]

From Wikpipedia "The hot blast temperature can be from 900C to 1300 C (1600F to 2300F)." That's the hot air going in. It gets hotter as the coke burns.

Second, that wasn't a blast furnace, but probably a pot of molten zinc for galvanizing. That's not nearly as hot.

So a chip that can handle 600C won;t last long in a 900C blast furnace.

AC (who used to work next to the blast furnaces long ago.)

It is about damn time

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell you how many times I have accidentally left my computer in the blast furnace. It is so annoying when it won't work after that!

Quick, someone warn Apollo Diamond!

[lordofthechia]

In case you didn't know, Apollo has been developing a system to grow diamond wafers through CVD (Carbon Vapor Deposition) for you guessed it, semiconductor use.

Anyway SiC is used in jewelry too (obviously with the same properites), just never realized that it could be used to make microelectronic devices like this. Heh, my wife's engagement ring just got way cooler.

Re:Quick, someone warn Apollo Diamond!

[lordofthechia]

Hmm... somehow lost my link to Apollo, well here it is.

Re:Quick, someone warn Apollo Diamond!

[dido]

Silicon carbide is really hard stuff. It's another name for the industrial abrasive carborundum and it's generally harder than sapphire (9 on the Mohs scale) but slightly softer than diamond (10 on the Mohs scale).

Re:Quick, someone warn Apollo Diamond!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, my wife's engagement ring just got way cooler.

Yeah, now she can use it to go online and meet someone who'd buy her the real thing.

Re:Quick, someone warn Apollo Diamond!

[dstiggy]

They're not the only company doing this. Diamonex http://www.diamonex.com/ a subsidiary of Morgan Advanced Ceramics has been making diamond on silicon for years. I should know as I have a part of a wafer sitting on my desk at home. As for the people worried about heat dissipation, these things move heat amazingly well (better than copper). I've taken the wafer and on edge it will cut through an ice cube like a knife through warm butter. Unfortunately it will turn your fingers numb in about 3 seconds too from the heat transfer.

Re:Quick, someone warn Apollo Diamond!

[crgrace]

In case you didn't know, SiC was actually the first commercially successful semiconductor. It is also known as Carborundum and was the basis of the original low cost "crystal radio sets" that were used by hobbyists and cheapskates to demodulate AM radio. Basically you had a wire called a "cat whisker" and you moved it around the SiC crystal until you made a good rectifying contact. Then, you would adjust the channel with a variable condenser (now called of course a capacitor) and it drove high impedance headphones. It was a "free energy" radio that had terrible performance but it was pretty cool because it used the EM radiation in the signal itself as the power source.

The more things change, the more old ideas/materials/circuits get dusted off.

The fun place to use this

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

I've wondered sometimes why people didn't build silicon carbide chips and put them into Venus landers.

Re:The fun place to use this

[Tavor]

True, it would allow the chip to function longer on descent. Building a vessel to hold it lightweight enough to launch, but heavy enough to survive the massive pressures of Venus' dense atmosphere is still the challenge.

Can you imagine a Venus lander 'floating' on a super-dense gas/liquid? It's Sci-Fi for the foreseeable future; and, likely forever.
/OT: Notice to all operators and grammar nazis. This station is operated by a man with a headcold. All scientific and spelling errors are unfortunate.

Re:The fun place to use this

[Iowan41]

Kinda like flight. Or going faster than 20 miles an hour. A little engineering thinking makes it easy to get around the pressure problem: Let it be "wet" not "dry" No need to maintain 1 bar in a pressure vessel, now is there? Of course, the other components have to handle the heat, too, not just the chips.

Re:The fun place to use this

[ACDChook]

Can you imagine a Venus lander 'floating' on a super-dense gas/liquid? And why would a Venus lander need to do this? Last I heard Venus was no gas giant. The Russian probes all seemed to find a solid surface to land on.

Re:The fun place to use this

[Tavor]

Bah. Venus? Somehow I got Venus and Jupiter mixed up. Mea culpa.

Love the name...

[Onlyodin]

Gotta love the name... fully SiC ;)

So, when are we getting these in workstations? Although, my current laptop tends to get pretty hot, I don't think I would want 1600 degrees on my nuts :P

Re:Love the name...

[Tablizer]

So, when are we getting these in workstations? Although, my current laptop tends to get pretty hot, I don't think I would want 1600 degrees on my nuts

Heat-resistant nuts are their next project.

Re:Love the name...

[jank1887]

not for a very long time. it's not a processor. it's likely a single transistor. see http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=294871&cid=20567843

This could help my girlfriend

[this great guy]

Every time she tries to use a laptop, it melts because... she is so hot.

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[BadAnalogyGuy]

This could help my girlfriend

Every time she tries to use a laptop, it melts because... she is so hot.

Maybe you should take her in for repairs. If the battery is from Sony, you may risk serious fire damage.

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

... *crickets*

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[Bodrius]

Ah, the moderation conundrum:

Should this be +1 Funny for using the words "my girlfriend" in Slashdot, or does the lameness of the other joke cancel it out?

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[The Orange Mage]

What other jo....oh, waaiiit. I get it. Teehee.

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[this great guy]

She is indeed a Sony fembot. Ahh that could explain a lot of things...

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[glwtta]

You aren't the first to make that mistake.

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time she tries to use a laptop, it melts because... she is so hot.

I know it is lonely being a geek, but your soldering iron is not a substitute for human companionship.

and...

[thatskinnyguy]

The new silicon carbide differential amplifier integrated circuit chip may provide benefits to anything requiring long-lasting electronic circuits in very hot environments such as jets, spacecraft, and industrial machinery...
...and the exhaust system of my car.

Noise could be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_noise

TFA talked about an analog amplifier. As such, noise is a problem. The higher the temperature a circuit is operated at, the greater the noise. For some low noise applications, it is standard practice to run an amplifier in a liquid nitrogen bath. For most applications, room temperature is ok from a noise standpoint. The temperature TFA talks about would produce about three times the noise of a room temperature circuit. For many applications, that would be way too much.

For some applications, high temperature operation would be hard to avoid. Landing a probe on Venus comes to mind in that regard. The extra noise induced by temperature should cause lots of engineering misery.

Re:Noise could be a problem

[jank1887]

hmmm.. too bad the PhD's never thought of that problem. oh, wait. they did. that's why they're using Silicon Carbide.

Thermal noise is typically related to the random promotion of carriers from the valence band to the conduction band, which gets worse at higher temperatures because the electrons get more energy. THE primary electronic difference between Silicon Carbide and Silicon is that SiC is a wide-bandgap material. It takes a lot more energy to promote carriers than in silicon. Also, SiC has ~0 thermally promoted carriers at room temperature, vs 10^10 for silicon. So, as temperature increases, it takes a while to get to the point that thermal noise becomes as much of a problem as it would be for silicon. Yes, if I needed a super precise amp, that could still be too much noise for some applications. Of course, if you needed one, not sure what better amp you're going to get to operate in a 600C environment.

Re:Noise could be a problem

[FuzzyDaddy]

There are amplifiers with Noise Figures of 600C == ~300K to ~900K) Gives an extra four or five dB of thermal noise.

Unless your a amplifying an extremely weak signal (for example, in an RF receiver), this amount of excess noise is probably irrelevant. Ku band (~14 GHz) Power amplifiers, for example, often have noise figures of 10 to 20 dB, and no one cares - because the signal level is so much higher than the thermal noise floor.

Laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

And you think laptops were too hot for your lap before..

Why?

[Foktip]

A Silicon Carbide chip could also be used to cut or grind steel... the manufacturing costs for making a silicon carbide ship must be insane!

Re:Why?

[jank1887]

wow. a 3 inch silicon carbide wafer costs a couple grand. a whole ship? maybe a small sloop or something. something like the titanic would require the GDP of a small country. or not so small.

but yes. it's expensive. until we figure out the processing control, costs will stay high too. still too expensive for most commercial app's, but once that changes SiC will replace a lot of Si power electronic devices.

Re:Why?

[Opportunist]

Let's hope they stay high. You are aware that AMD and Intel will immediately stop trying to get faster without increasing the heat if they could, yes? I mean, yes, we'd have CPUs running at approximately 5 times the speed in a year, but wasting about 10 times the energy to do that. 20 times if you factor in the AC energy cost to keep the room at a temperature below 100F.

Re:Why?

[darkwhite]

Power consumption and thermal dissipation are two separate problems. You're used to thinking of them as rigidly related, because the thermals for modern CPUs are very rigidly defined, but by conflating the two you're only displaying ignorance.

With lower need for thermal dissipation at any given power draw, the demand on the cooling system is lower. That means smaller, quieter, and lighter components everywhere a high performance IC is present.

350C for Silicon?

[Mateorabi]

Summary claims 350C for traditional silicon, but most silicon based transistor manufacturers list only 125C as the maximum junction temperature. (Which makes the package temp max out at 70-85C.) Makes me question how fast and loose the author was playing with the numbers. Article starts with 600C for SiC, but in the same paragraph they are down to 500C for only < 2000hrs of operation? Hype?

Also, do SiC transitors switch as fast as doped silicon? Otherwise the "make a pentium with it!" ideas might fall flat.

Re:350C for Silicon?

[icegreentea]

the 350 vs 600 degree figure comes from the NASA site linked to from TFA.

Re:350C for Silicon?

[jank1887]

confirmed. here's the nasa SiC main page. http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/SiC/

not sure where they pulled that number from. 350F is ~175C. That's about right. harsh applications, certain silicon devices can go a bit above 150. maybe with heavy doping a bit higher. my guess is they meant F on the site.

Re:350C for Silicon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ssshhh, everybody knows NASA has this little problem that they don't like to mention. Better not draw attention to it.

Re:350C for Silicon?

[ApharmdB]

SiC is meant as a replacement for GaAs in RF circuitry. SiC and GaN are the next generation semiconductors with much, much better thermal properties and max voltage than GaAs. SiC is not meant as a replacement for Si on digital chips as far as I know, but I'm an RF electrical engineer.

Re:350C for Silicon?

[Anonymous Coward]

125C is what the vendor would recommend as maximum operating temperature for a silicon die for very simple parts. This is essentially based on reliability and what electrical parameter of the chip they are willing to "guarantee" or designed for.

Translation:
If you operate a chip beyond what it was designed for, then you are on your own. The chip might not even function correctly. The leakages of the chip and/or internal resistance might become so high that it would burn out. Metal might migrate into junctions and cross short circuit. Package or bond wire might break etc. A chip is make up of a large number of different parts that expand/contract differently.

Great for cookies

[cosm]

Might be useful in things like after market automotive applications. Think pimp my rides.
-Dude my car has 2 plasmas on the engine block and ground-fx in my exhaust!
Or - Imagine the possibilities...
-Elementary school kids can put blinking LEDs on their pottery in art class.
-Sparklers that have those embedded electronic voice boxes that sing "Na na...can't touch this."
-I can run a computer in a cooking pot roast for the sake of novelty. (Anyone for the back of CPU magazine, or pot roast?)

This does not bode well...

[pokerdad]

...for anyone planning on owning the XBox 720.

Re:This does not bode well...

[Anonymous Coward]

As an act of good faith they'll not only replace the system, but the burnt down house too.

Sorry, OT...

[pushing-robot]

600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit

I love those "pull-significant-digits-out-of-my-ass" unit conversions.

Re:Sorry, OT...

[Anonymous Coward]

There went my last cup of milk, right through my nose. Thanks to you, I need to recopy this Chemistry homework.

Re:Sorry, OT...

[Dunbal]

Don't worry, NONE of those digits are significant, since the ACTUAL temperature of a blast furnace is around 2000-2300 degrees C. I certainly remember the kilns at the cement plant my dad worked at used to get up to around 1900 C. 600 degrees is nothing as far as furnaces are concerned, although it's more than your oven can do.

Re:Sorry, OT...

[NerdyLove]

I was stuck working in a steel mill for a summer, and remember the temperature being well over 2000C. I walked past the shield once with bad timing, and they had rotated the vessel towards me. 20' away and I thought it burnt the hair off the back of my head. Offtopic, but quite hot.

Sunshine

[kylehase]

This is probably what they used on the spacecraft in the movie Sunshine.

What will you use for interconnects?

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably the chip has to sit on some type of circuit board, connected to other components.

So it's OK if the chip survives but the rest of the circuit melts?

Re:What will you use for interconnects?

[jank1887]

no. see comments above. specifically http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=294871&cid=20567843

Re:CPUs..

[QuickFox]

That is pretty cool. Cool? You think these chips are cool? I'd hate to be in a place you think is hot.

Venus Lander!

[Derling Whirvish]

Maybe we can finally get a decent lander or rover on Venus.

Re:Venus Lander!

[vought]

Maybe we can finally get a decent lander or rover on Venus.


Maybe we can even get a descent lander.

Venus: Here we come!

[chris_sawtell]

Venus darling, Please don't get alarmed, but those wretched Earthlings have made a super-dooper hot-stuff control whatsit. You'd better watch out because from what I hear that super-hot atmospheric condom of your's isn't going to protect you from frequent and repeated penetration much longer. Sorry to be such a harbinger, but I just thought you ought to know. Haved a chat to Mars, he knows all about what they get up to.

But will we be able to build a fanless PC from it?

[siyavash]

It's nice and all but will we be able to build a fanless PC from it? Although I'm not sure how fast the PC would operate if it could be allowed to get that hot?

Only a few dB

[markov_chain]

n/t

Hey, NASA's capabilities are increasing by leaps

[patio11]

Now the chips which will execute the

    distanceInFeet = distanceInFeet + deltaInMeters;

calculation are heat resistant.

(Hey, only kidding guys. I mean, we all make mistakes. Of course, I don't expect you to be rocket scie... oh, wait. Well, its not like you had ten billion dollars of... oh, wait. Well, the point of it is, you can still make mistakes.)

Blast furnace temperatures

[teuluPaul]

The claim to be able to withstand blast furnace temperatures may be over stated. The process of producing iron from a blast furnace generates temperatures in the range of 900C to 1300 C, well in excess of those in which this chip is claimed to survive. See wikipedia for more information.

What "Silicon carbide (SiC) chips" to build?

[Anonymous Coward]

What "Silicon carbide (SiC) chips" to build?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardened

Pick you Rad-Hardened 32-bit uP:
#1. RAD750 PowerPC-750
#2. Am29000 (variable window size to improve usage)
#3. LEON SPARC v8 (ESA) (fixed window size)
#4. i686

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_29000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEON
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I686

My first questions

[artifex2004]

Have they got a carrier or other method of holding it to a circuit board that will stand up to that heat? Speaking of, have they got circuit boards that stand up to that heat? And obviously solder can't be used. So how will they interconnect? Glass fiber may melt at higher temps, but I'll bet the optical properties distort well before then, considering it glows when it gets hot enough. Not to mention they have to make the emitters and receivers withstand that temp as well.

Re:My first questions

[GloomE]

Not all circuit boards are glass fiber.
Ceramics are already used where you need precision e.g. wave guides.

Re:My first questions

[pragma_x]

That was my first thought as well. I think the tech is really better suited for just increasing the overall reliability of spacecraft electronics, since they have to be ridiculously hot/cold tolerant. Typically, it's not in the nature of aerospace guys to shake up an entire mode of engineering on a single discovery; so if anything, this stuff is going to be phased in nice and slow starting with everything staying the same except for the chip substrate (SiC instead of plain Si).

But in order for this to open the door for the entire craft to run at a higher temperature, you'd have to change a bunch of things. Obviously, most plastics are out of the question. Others, in this thread, have mentioned using ceramic component carriers - this may well be the case for chip packaging as well. I'd wager that you'd also have to use wire-wrap instead of solder, unless there's something else that has a suitable melting point and conductivity for welding components together (aluminum perhaps).

Columbia...

[newgalactic]

Is this so "black boxes" will still function upon a failed reentry?

SiC is an active area of research

[Anonymous Coward]

I see SiC research papers mostly in power electronics, especially very high voltage devices.

Here's the first useful google hit with an overview of SiC tech:

Google cache of .doc

Just good to know I can run my Intel CPU at 350C!

[unassimilatible]

Why even have a heatsink?

Will help in hot countries!

[cheros]

Anywhere you run a PC where it's above room temperature you've got cooling issues - if this gets to a sensible price you could do away with a lot of gadgetry that has to be added to keep things like servers working.

I'm also thinking of SCADA deployment in dry and dusty places - less parts means more reliability.

Re:Will help in hot countries!

[B5_geek]

I thought I should point out that any room that you have a PC in, is at room temperature.

Re:CPUs..

[Architect_sasyr]

Redundant - adj. - 1. characterized by verbosity or unnecessary repetition in expressing ideas; prolix: a redundant style.

Maybe this had something to do with it... If you have a problem with the moderation system when it actually works, I can't wait to see you in a heated discussion (something like vi vs. emacs).

Re:Just good to know I can run my Intel CPU at 350

[Andrzej Sawicki]

Maybe melting the surrounding components would not be so good?

Or as the Kiwi's would say:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like, fully SiC bro!

In related news....

[NerveGas]

    Intel re-released the Pentium-D line, using this technology.

the packaging...

[Anonymous Coward]

the limiting factor with Si is infact the packaging AND that is going to be the limiting factor with SiC operating temp as well

NASA are right in saying that Silicon can operate at 350C but that is the exposed die that isn't on any substrate and using spring-point connections
Start packaging the thing up and you have the die solder down onto something, solder wires onto the die and it is these things that put the operating temp at 125C

Semikron have IGBT modules that they say can operate upto a die temp of 175 simply because they have got a method of not using solder to bond the die down and they use spring-points todo the electronic/electrical connections all allowing the temp to be risen

Sure SiC "may" be able to operate at some nice high temps BUT there are NO!!!! packaging available to take advantage of this!!! and thus the max temp comes crashing down to the nice 175 (or 125 depending if you can/cant use some of the more advance bonding methods)

This is again all pie in the sky stuff anyway... The problem is SiC is a bitch to grow and their yield is very low due to micro-piping occurring in the wafers making them useless.
Not only that they have only just been able to make a switch!!! SiC diodes have existed for a few years now and for custom modules you can get an inverter brick with SiC diodes and they have only just been able to make a JFET out of SiC that is low voltage/current/switching-speed....

So much so that quite a few semiconductor makers have invested alot into diamond (cause when it grows it grows just as good as silicon, just slow... oh they aint figured out a way to dope it yet ;)).

Re:the packaging...

[jank1887]

close very close.p> the limiting factor for silicon is loss of junction action as more carriers get thermally promoted to the conduction band. typically right around 200C, the intrinsic carrier concentration overtakes the typical doped carrier density. But, you start getting increased leakage currents and higher current gain well below that. Depending on the type of transistors used, latch-up failure becomes more likely. the prime factor affecting what temp things start going bad is the amount of doping used. Increase doping, you can run a little hotter. But, it decreases the voltage breakdown limit, forcing you to de-rate.

yields are the big limiter right now. MOS devices are attacking oxide trap problems similar to silicon research in the 70's. manufacturers are demoing 1200V, 50A JFET's. they're getting there, but the device technology is a lot further along than other power device options (GaN, diamond, etc.) But those others are getting a lot of attention as well, especially in Japan.

there are many packaging techniques available to take advantage of high SiC temperatures. None cheap and commonly used, since Silicon can't make use of them, but ceramic boards, non-alloy wirebonds, eutectic die attaches, high temp brazes. they all exist, and have been used, but they're expensive. not-so-aggressive options can get you to 250 without too much trouble. e.g. http://www.honeywell.com/sites/portal?smap=aerospace&page=High-Temp-Electonics3&theme=T5&catID=C82A27CF1-C0F1-76E9-6B52-2C477FB52FF7&id=H5E761CAC-F16E-40AF-B54E-3DFBA7F0A988&sel=1

Dell notebooks

[Potor]

perhaps, but they would be invaluable for those dell notebooks ...

Re:CPUs..

[QuickFox]

A bit harsh. They're just a minute apart. Maybe just seconds apart.

Not that I see much point in protesting mods. This happens all the time. You just move on. Next time it may go the opposite way.

But if, in spite of this, you do stop to think about it briefly, then in fact it is undeserved when the comments may well have been just a few seconds apart.

Singularity just got closer

[mattr]

Excellent now we can have a Matryoshka shell of advanced computing equipment orbiting nearer to the sun just like in the (soon to be outdated) scifi novels!

Re:Singularity just got closer

[StarfishOne]

Yes! Matrioshka brain's FTW! :D :P

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain
http://movementarian.com/2006/08/25/megascale-engineering-matrioshka-brain-edition/

Dissipate 1750 watts..

[mikelang]

According to this spec http://www.tr2tt.com/products/coolers/m15se/m15se.htm, Pentium Prescott could dissipate 1750 watts of power if given temperature that is 500C higher than the ambient.

Figures. NASA is trying to...

[Anonymous Coward]

...do something about their ass, which is on fire.

At last!

[Flying pig]

I was looking into this in the early 90s (along with the development of diamond as a semiconductor.) We were in fact interested in very robust front ends for things like telecoms systems, that could survive lightning strike or EMP. Here the issue is not to operate at very high temp., but to survive brief excursions to it. The problem with any form of lightning protection is that the sensitive amplifier must be outside the protected area, or how can it get the signal?

In fact SiC has a long history as a semiconductor. Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall buying the stuff from a company near Niagara Falls (needed the cheap hydro electricity for the manufacturing process.) SiC has been used in the past for making voltage dependent resistors, used for protection against really big surges. One of our test rigs had a large steel cabinet, eight feet long and six feet high, containing a stack of carbide blocks with large copper fins between them, and connected to a chimney and a big extract fan. This object could take (and absorb) repetitive surges of half a megajoule, and was used in the simulation of 11KV systems falling onto or otherwise connecting to telecoms and domestic power lines.

Anyway, nostalgia aside, it's nice to know research has continued and SiC can now be made pure enough (and presumably sufficiently defect-free) to build small scale semiconductors. As a complete aside, although hydrogen may form most of the universe, followed up by helium, we wouldn't be anywhere without the elements of valency 4. Carbon, silicon,germanium...it's a slight paradox that starts have to go nova just so that we can evolve and then make semiconductors. If God exists, she's a geek with a strange sense of humor.

End of 3RL

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the next version of the Xbox 360 will include this technology to prevent the dreaded 3RL from happening.

Cameras

[Archades54]

I want something like this for camera sensors, would have maybe saved my old Canon Powershot in the Australian heat + Car.

Awesome News!

[sunspot42]

Now hardware capable of running it is finally available, Duke Nukem Forever should be released any day now!

Re: Heat resistance

[ozbird]

In particular, NASA said SiC applications will include energy storage, renewable energy, nuclear power, and electrical drives.

Yeah right. Everyone knows these are just government funding cover stories for the true purpose: extreme overclocking.

Re:CPUs..

[budgenator]

pretty cool, getting moded flamebait in a thread about an IC chip that'll run in a blast furness!

Don't bring out the champange just yet.

[polaren_p]

Silicon carbide (SiC), is very difficult do use as a semiconductor due to highly mobile dislocations. These dislocations rapidly increase within the crystal, introducing levels in the bandgap, i.e it's no longer a semiconductor and ultimately the device will fail. However, if the NASA scientists have found a way to lock down the dislocations, which is done when regular silicon semiconductors are produced, there is no questions about the versatility of SiC.

why not a vacume sealed computer chamber?

[cheekyboy]

You could instead use more normal components in a 100% sealed container thats vacume isolated and suspended on a magnetic field and uses small a heat generated turbine to make electricity since its so hot.

Btw, how much of venuss heat is due to presure rather than the greenhouse effect, since only 30% of light/heat gets to the surface it would take a long time to heat up, it still loses
heat due to normal thermal dynamics . But if venus was at mars distance, how hot would it still be? Try any gas at 90 earth here and does it get hot?

Re:why not a vacume sealed computer chamber?

[ichigo 2.0]

You could instead use more normal components in a 100% sealed container thats vacume isolated and suspended on a magnetic field

I'm no rocket scientist, but wouldn't that make it kind of hard to get any data back to earth?

Re:why not a vacume sealed computer chamber?

[suitti]

Not really. You can have a wire from the inside to the outside attach to an antenna.

The vacuum chamber is a good insulator, but the computer will be generating heat on the inside. So, it's still best if the computer produces as little heat as possible, and if there is a way to get rid of the heat. I suspect that Venus will cook it eventually, anyway. Plenty can be learned in a few hours, though.

Re:why not a vacume sealed computer chamber?

[khallow]

Btw, how much of venuss heat is due to presure rather than the greenhouse effect, since only 30% of light/heat gets to the surface it would take a long time to heat up, it still loses heat due to normal thermal dynamics . But if venus was at mars distance, how hot would it still be? Try any gas at 90 earth here and does it get hot?

The only energy inputs are the Sun and internal heat from Venus. The former dominates. Pressure is not an energy source so it doesn't have an effect on long term temperature directly (it can change how and where the atmosphere absorbs energy). If Venus were at the distance of Mars, the atmosphere would cool down because there would be a lot less energy coming into the system. I doubt the CO2 dominated atmosphere would freeze and it wouldn't change measurably in pressure, but we'd probably see higher densities at the surface combined with a sharper decline in density as one rises in altitude. The higher temperatures cause the atmosphere to puff out.

Re:why not a vacume sealed computer chamber?

[ichigo 2.0]

Not really. You can have a wire from the inside to the outside attach to an antenna.

Wouldn't that make it less than 100% sealed? :)

Re:why not a vacume sealed computer chamber?

[suitti]

> Wouldn't that make it less than 100% sealed? :)

Of course not. Wire doesn't pass gas.

This is great news for...

[Tastecicles]

...Those who bought an Advent laptop from PC World. Now all they need to do is figure out how to stop those pesky hinges from cracking...

Terminator

[PMBjornerud]

Screw that. Handling a blast furnace, this is what they should have used when T-1000 came out. (Or preferable, already in the prototype...)

600 C is not even hot compared to a blast furnace

[viking80]

600 C is not even hot compared to a blast furnace

A blast furnace is a metallurgical furnace generally used to produce iron. It operates between 2000 C to 2300 C (3600F to 4200F). (Irons melting point is 1538 C or 2800 F).

.

Copper?

[2901]

The traditional challenge is to get the melting point of solder low enough. The worry about moving to lead-free solder is "how will we keep the melting point down." It is the silicon chip that is the delicate component
that is damaged by heat.

Ofcourse the low heat tolerance of silicon chips, by limiting permitted temperatures during manufacturing, also limits required temperatures. No-one requires circuit boards to withstand more heat than the components can take. So some materials that sheltered behind the poor temperature resistance of silicon chips are out, but there is no fundamental problem.

Re:Just good to know I can run my Intel CPU at 350

[Jesus_666]

Wuss! Real Men don't care what state their equipment is in, whether it be solid, liquid, gaseous or a frickin' plasma at the same temperature as the sun's core. You really need to grow up.

Wrong ...

[cheros]

I was debating with myself to caveat this situation :-).

It think you're forgetting something - not al PCs are used as workstations. Think of ATMs out in hot countries, and not everyone with a small company has the resources to place a server in an airconditioned place either, either for lack of energy or space. And quite a bit of SCADA platforms are out there in the nice hot sun, and I'd feel much happier if they had less parts that could fail. Granted, the PC style stuff is not usually used in ESD chains (Emergency Shutdown) but one level I prefer things to keep working as well, even if the environment changes - a fan failure is then less of a problem.

Good enough for Venus

[mbone]

Since Venus's surface temperature is about 460 C, these chips would presumably work on the surface of Venus, which would allow for long duration landers, or even rovers, should we want to do that. I think of Venus, "Earth's evil twin," as being a very interesting planet, but there has never been very much interest in exploring it at NASA.

The only pictures we have of the surface of Venus are from the Venera landers. (These USSR Venus landers were all inernally insulated and weren't designed to last on the surface more than about an hour; since the data were relayed from the fly-by bus spacecraft which was only in range for about that duration, there was no point in doing more.)

Zardoz!

[crovira]

Remember the 'McGuffin' in Zardoz?

It was a diamond based processor.

In fact it was a diamond based, optical processor...

Hmm... Things that make you go hmm...

Oh, for people who don't know, 'McGuffin' was Alfred Hitchcock's name for a central plot device around which everything in the story rotated.

And for people who don't know who Alfred Hitchcock was, he was a famous movie director.

Its not easy getting old. There's all this common 'shared reference' shit to worry about losing.

Re:Zardoz!

[Marlow the Irelander]

I knew what a MacGuffin was. I knew who Alfred Hitchcock was. The one thing I didn't know - what the hell Zardoz is - you left out!

Insert your own insensitive clod memes etc.

Re:Zardoz!

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's a "movie"? Like DDR but different?

Re:Zardoz!

[StellarFury]

"a famous movie director" doesn't quite cut it for Hitchcock. You're better off just being esoteric.

Re:Zardoz!

[Maximum Prophet]

More importantly, even though the plot rotated around the MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or Maguffin), it has little other relevance to the story.

Re:Zardoz!

[CTachyon]

Short, short version: Sean Connery runs around in an orange diaper, while everyone else is either an immortal having telepathic acid trips, or else is a brutal who shoots you while chanting "The penis is evil! The penis shoots seeds!"

It really, really should've been on MST3K, though the giggle factor is high enough that you don't need Mike/Joel and the Bots to keep your sanity.

Re: Heat resistance

[Jesus_666]

Either that or self-resoldering XBox 360 CPUs.

EM Pulse

[AveryRegier]

I'm reading a book now called 'Aftermath' wherein Alpha Century goes supernova and sends a massive EM Pulse through Earth's atmosphere, killing all microchips. (I'm just assuming the science is well researched and correct here.)

Would these hardened chips be able to withstand that?

Re:CPUs..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha. I like the parent's comment, I found it sarcastic but funny. Mods need to get laid or something. (Please mod this offtopic.)

Massively Heat-Resistant Chips ?

[Alt-Ctrl-Freak]

Oh just brillllllliant! Now how the fark are they gonna fry them? Thank-you, Mr Genius Scientist, but I prefer to eat mine cooked, not frozen, you MORON!

I've been waiting all my life for this

[need4mospd]

I finally have something to go with my heat-resistant habanero pepper salsa.

XBox 360

[Alexpkeaton1010]

Maybe now MS can finally build one that works longer than a few months.

in != at

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

. . .can operate in 600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit . . .

I'm sure they don't run that hot. It sounds like they can run in an environment that is that hot.

So, how do we...

[Benjamin Shniper]

How can we kill the terminators now?

Thanks a lot, Nasa. You've just doomed us all.

No one made the obvious references?

[jwonder69]

Where's either: 1. Wow, this would have helped Sony/Dell when the laptops started melting or 2. Any generic Terminator reference

Oh, good.

[FlyByPC]

As an electronics enthusiast with the exquisite l33t soldering skills of a drunk baboon (and that's on a good day), I for one welcome our new heat-resistant overlords. Er, chips.

Has narrower application then most reader's might

[ChrisA90278]

Hard to believe all the people posting here that think some how this is related to digital logic or CPU chips. Even the summary said "differential amplifier integrated circuit chip" I guess those words go over the heads of most readers. What this really means is that now, with this kind of chip you can have shorter wires leads on sensors even to the point of packaging a sensor and an operational amplifier in the same package. This will go a long way to lower noise in certain measurements.

massively?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does mass have to do with heat resistance? Or did the idiot submitter mean "very"?

Yet another solution to a non-problem

[Ancient_Hacker]

Think, folks, think. How often do you need electronics IN a hot zone?

What's worked just fine for many decades is to have sensors in the hot zone, ceramic or Teflon-coated wires to a cooler place where you have the electronics.

Wha????? Is is ALL about the temperature gradient!

[gnuman99]

err, chips are designed to operate at some temperature. That temperature is X. Head dissipation depends on a temperature *gradient* away from the chip.

In an environment where a chip is at 50C and ambient is at 20C, then the max cooling potential is that 30C temperature differential.

IF, you put that same chip in an oven and heat it to 200C and IF air flow and all that is the same, then I would expect the chip to be at 200C + 30C = 230C. Again, the same 30C temperature differential.

So now, if you a chip that can operate up to 600C, and you have the same setup as above, then ambient can be up to 30C less than that or 570C.

Now, I spoke of the gradient, etc. That is the air flow and heatsink thing - it affects the gradient over the naked chip. "Water cooling" generally increases the cooling gradient. That's all.

The work that NASA is doing is very valuable. It may not be for your next mobo chip (mobo would melt), but for industrial applications and space missions to places like Venus where ambient is quite high and silicon does not last.

Now, now.

[JeanPaulBob]

Don't be vacuous.

Or an Arizona Summer!

[DrPeper]

"provide benefits to anything requiring long-lasting electronic circuits in very hot environments such as jets, spacecraft, and industrial machinery." ...or the typical Arizona Summer. Like a phone that you could leave in your car accidentally and not worry about it.

Article light on details

[LionMage]

I worked for a materials science company that was trying to manufacture ultra-pure Calcium Fluoride optics for extreme UV lithography. Our vacuum furnaces had a lot of specially-constructed silicon carbide parts which were manufactured using a vacuum deposition process, and were very strong and heat resistant (for the temperatures we were generating in the furnace). My boss, a material scientist of some renown, told me he wanted to eventually get into manufacturing SiC semiconductors because they could be made extremely heat-tolerant. He was specifically interested in military applications (because he knew that was where the big money was), although I told him I could imagine building ultra-compact, high current power amplifiers (being the hi-fi nut that I am).

One thing that always struck me about silicon carbide, though, was how porous most of the parts we had were. Apparently, this was an artifact of the manufacturing process used, but I do wonder how NASA got the process to work for making chips; up til now, I had only seen SiC transistors in labs, not chips with many transistors etched on them. When I say porous, I mean you could hold a SiC railing up to your mouth and actually breathe through the seemingly solid surface (albeit with a fair amount of resistance).

Super Hot Chips

[Anonymous Coward]

But will my gravy stay warm also?