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New State of Matter Could Extend Moore's Law
rennerik writes "Scientists at McGill University in Montreal say they've discovered a new state of matter that could help extend Moore's Law and allow for the fabrication of more tightly packed transistors, or a new kind of transistor altogether. The researchers call the new state of matter 'a quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal.' It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
I believe the term you're looking for is Dilithium.
" It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
That's exactly what I want in my office.
It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth.
This is great news for those of us who like to cool our home CPUs with multi-million pound systems of lasers and magnets.
The researchers call the new state of matter 'a quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal.' It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth.
I don't know why, but I think this will take a while to get to my local PC store.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Extend it? I trust you mean CONFIRM IT YET AGAIN!
Thought so.
Moore's Law relates to the rate of how many transistors can be packed onto a... oh... wait... *slowly walks away and hides behind a tree*
Did they change something or is space still a vacuum? A vacuum can't have a temperature if there's nothing in it to have motion or movement.
I might be wrong but isn't the temperature of space absolut zero. How can you get colder than absolut zero? Can someone with knowledge of the subject matter be so kind to explain?
Moore's law is about manufacturing on silicon
If it isn't silicon, then it isn't Moore's law.
remember kids, increasing processor speed is a by product of Moore's law/ Moore's law is about cost of manufacturing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How cold is that in libraries of congresses?
... "...It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
What does this mean? Give us a temperature. At least that would be concrete.
According to wikipedia, intergalactic space is 2.71 Kelvin. I would assume that they mean "100th the temperature of intergalactic space", not "100 times colder than intergalactic space", as the latter is nonsensical and implies that it exists at 100 times colder than intergalactic space is colder than room temperature, meaning -28834 Kelvin (293 - 100 * (293 - 2.73) where we assume that room temperature is 20 degrees centigrade). This is nonsense.
So, my PC is going to be running at 0.0273 Kelvin. Well, that's convenient! I love my room when it's that cold!
Does space even have a temperature?
SKYNET has been discovered. Need I say more?
enjoy it while you have it - for it may be gone soon.
None, because as we all know Librarians are HOT!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space
My ex-girlfriend?
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081021185213.htm
To get colder than Absolut, drink more than the body can handle, the you'll Absolutly shut down..., hehehe
As for the 3D Crystal Ball, that's a better take on Mr. Peabody's 3DBB (3-Dimensional Black Board) Sherman always marveled at. But, these scientists are pretty good, taking on the Matter by the Horn...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Now gimme mah memristors!
The enemies of Democracy are
Wait, so somebody discovered a whole new state of matter, and all we have to say is it could extend Moore's Law? I would hope the implications would be just a tad bit more grand for such a discovery than possibly validating somebody's metric for a little while.
100 times colder than 0 K? So, that's what, 0 K? Why not make it 1000 times colder?
(Yes I know space is slightly warmer than absolute zero, but it's still a really weird claim to make - we are only talking about a couple of degrees here)
Also, am I the only one who, upon hearing "discovered a new state of matter", doesn't immediately think "Sweet, we can extends Moore's Law!", but rather "Holy shit, a new state of matter?" Seems like a pretty big discovering on its own, even without being tied to chip manufacturing...
sic transit gloria mundi
[Scientist 1] A new state of matter! This is AWESOME!
[Scientist 2] Yeah, but it's bloody expensive making the stuff. How can we bring in more funding?
[Scientist 1] Umm ... Something to do with terrorism? Err ...
[Scientist 2] ...energy crisis? Can we do anything with oil? ...
[Scientist 1] ...what about computers? Could you make smaller transistors with this stuff?
[Scientist 2] Yeah, it might fly. Let's run with that.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
TFA doesn't state any specific temperature, but I find the analogy to how "cold" space is rather troubling. Space is really "warm", as it contains energy left from the Big Bang (although no one with a common sense would describe it that way in daily talk), and saying that something is so many times colder than space really just doesn't make sense.
You can always compare sizes, but as heat is a positive size, because you can't have negative energy, you can just say "this is a hundred times hotter than that" or "my freezer is two times as cold as my refrigerator compared to my living room".
The one who thought of this analogy could be talking about degrees on Celsius or Fahrenheit, but then those numbers must be way below absolute zero, or 0 Kelvin, as space is just 2.7 Kelvin, or -270.7 C ( http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sp_ht.html ) and taking for granted he is comparing the temperature of space to 0 ÂC, that means that those crystals are actually -27070 C.
And _that_ would be some real frontpage material...
100 times colder than intergalactic space
Does space even have a temperature?
Well, if I remember correctly from winters in elementary school:
Space's temperature, according to my 1st grade teacher, is "Really cold"...
If I remember correctly from winters in elementary school:
"Super Cold" is about 2 times colder than "Really Cold"
"F*cking cold" is about 10 times colder than "Really Cold"
"FREEZING" is about 5 times colder than "Cold"
So 100 times colder than intergalactice space would be "Super F*cking FREEZING!" (said while shivering for effect)
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
From comments in TFA:
The researcher, Dr. Guillaume Gervais, is director of McGill University's Ultra-Low Temperature Condensed Matter Experiment Lab. There's nothing in the journal letter about "a new state of matter". The McGill Newsroom article quotes him as saying to the interviewer, "It's actually not quite 3-D, it's an in-between state, a totally new phenomenon" as compared with the 2-D electron crystals that transistors and IC chips are made of. The interviewer, or an editor, thought "Physics -- state -- new state of matter". Engadget's Melanson picked up the error and passed it on uncritically.
Just be thankful we have SSDs now - I'm not sure HDs would be compatible with such a system!
Dr. Guillaume Gervais, director of McGill's Ultra-Low Temperature Condensed Matter Experiment Lab, describes them in terms of a ham sandwich, where the ham -- the two-dimensional crystal -- represents a flat plane that constrains the movement of the electrons in two dimensions.
Mmmmmm, ham sandwich. Now, off to topology for donuts! Mmmmmmm, donuts.
We Bokononists prefer to call it Ice-nine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism
Say hello to my little sig.
Why would we want to extend Moore's law? I mean, why merely double the number of transistors every 18 months (or however it goes)? Why not increase the number of transistors by a factor of five, or ten in a single year? It seems stupid to me to limit yourself.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Mr. Peabody, and his boy Sherman, used the Wayback Machine.
The 3DBB was used by Phineas J. Whoopee, when he was educating Tennessee Tuxedo and his walrus pal, Chumley.
Look at my ID. I am old... old as dirt! :)
I used to watch these, as well as "The World of Commander McBragg", and the ever-popular Underdog. "The secret compartment of my ring I fill with an Underdog super-vitamin energy pill." The people involved in the supposed live-action remake of Underdog should all be lowered into wood chippers feet first... and slowly.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
Yes. A few degrees above absolute zero. Which means taht "100 times colder" is, of course, physically impossible, or meaningless.
This is what happens when your science reporter flunked high school science.
The phrase "100 times colder" is commonly understood to mean at a temperature 1/100 of that being compared. Average temperature of outer space is 3 K, so, "100 times colder" would be .03 K. So, the phrasing is perfectly acceptable.
my pet machine
As soon as I saw the title I thought of that one episode from The Big Bang Theory where they give a presentation on the new form of matter.
Completely unrelated, I just thought it was funny.
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
I looked it up because it caught my eye.
So they fill a paper cup, then dump it into you travel mug(yeah you) then toss the cup?
Hmm. I understand why they can't use your mug for the creation of the drink, but I wonder why they just don't use a ceramic cup for the preparation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since there are already numerous posts invoking the applicability (or not) of Moore's Law, I thought I would start over. Although Gordon Moore certainly formulated his law based on silicon (original is here: http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/.) it can be applied clear back to 1890 with the Hollerith 'computer' that tabulated the 1890 census. When you graph it out, Moore's Law applies to electro-mechanical switches, then to relays, then to vacuum tubes, then transistors themselves (like in a six transistor radio of the 50's), then on to silicon. It's still the same exponential curve, in five separate states, only the last one of which is silicon. Kurzweil discusses this in depth here: http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1. People who claim Moore's Law doesn't apply because this isn't traditional silicon acreage are missing the point, which is that not only is Moore's Law more encompassing than the originally envisioned, it is not going away any time soon. The imminent death of Moore's Law, as always, has been greatly exaggerated.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
You don't need matter to have a temperature. Even in a "perfect" vacuum (i.e. nothing but quantum fluctuation transient particle-antiparticle pairs) there is still radiant energy in the form of photons - and their wavelength distribution corresponds to a temperature.
It's the temperature at which a black-body test object, bathed continuously in photons of that frequency distribution, would neither warm up nor cool down further.
The radiant temperature of the sky far from the influence of nearby galaxies is known as the "cosmic background temperature". It's about 4 degrees absolute - corresponding to the light from the big bang red-shifted down a LOT by cosmic expansion.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If it doesn't go onto a desktop chip, I am not sure Moore's law is being extended by this theoretical application.
They do mean 100 times colder! By being below absolute zero, distances and therefore time becomes negative. With sufficient negativity, they can produce a Pentium that'll give you the wrong answer before you provide it with the data!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In Soviet Russia, the State matters you.
that there was a different state of matter at absolute zero. At least I was under the impression we did.
"Approximately 100 times colder than intergalactic space"
Call me a troll if you must, but this is 'news for nerds'. Why not just give us the temperature in Kelvin?
Been there, seen it, nothing new. move along...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz
Is it called Dilithium Crystals? ;)
Can it focus an antimatter explosion through it to power a "warp drive"? :)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Lucky, outer space certainly seems like the only place to cheaply get that amount of cooling.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
At some point, you just have to give up on this stuff...
How about New Zoo Review:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zoo_Revue
? hehehe... we're aging ourselves...
hehehe
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I am getting really tired of these articles that come out every other month touting some new technology as the replacement to the standard npn or pnp transistor model. First it was the cross-switch then it was some stupid crystal, then a strand of DNA...give me a break already. All these exotic solutions exist solely in academia and never end up being viable in the commercial realm. Yes yes, I hear you yelling "But a lot of past inventions came from academia!!". I am referring just to transistors here, and the tendency to hype up every new concept as a potential replacement to existing fabrication techniques.
A real breakthrough actually came in 2007 when the industry replaced polysilicon gates with high-k metal ones, a breakthrough that was accomplished through research at IBM, not a university.
In addition, I am sick of every transistor article mentioning Moore's "Law". Originally Gordon Moore noticed a trend, and made a prediction. Now companies are forcing themselves to innovate so as not to "fall behind" the Moore curve. This is a good thing, as it causes innovation, but the trend he noticed should not be considered a law by any means.
You know, we *can* understand Kelvin ... or can we expect the next comparison as "1000 times colder than a polar bear's left testicle".
How does one measure x times colder than something?
5C is half as warm as 10C, so is that 2 times colder? What if I measured in F?
Isn't space about 3K? What's 100 times colder? 0.3K? Or was that measured in C? 270C x 100 = -2700C? Below absolute 0?
I understand saying x times ???er to say size, weight, etc, but for temperature where we have 2 arbitrary 0's and 1 theoretical 0?
They smoke too much dope and make outlandish statements about their work to get more money to fund their dope, er... research.
Looks like cold fusion's back and more applicable than ever!
Perfect vacuum is theoretically impossible
The relevant law of Nature is: "Nature abhors a vacuum."
And since it is Mother Nature, the relevant reason behind this law is the old Mother's law: "Because I said so".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Lets face it...one needs to have priorities ;)
Can anyone explain exactly why this is considered as a potential "solution" to extending Moore's Law? I'm not clear on how this discovery - interesting as it is - related to Moore's Law.
Intergalactic space is not at 2.7 K. Especially in galaxy clusters, the temperature of the intergalactic medium is often millions of degrees Kelvin. Even in more remote places far from galaxy clusters, it's still much warmer than 2.7 K. The 2.7 K figure is the temperature associated with the cosmic microwave background radiation, not the intergalactic medium.
I don't think Americans can take four more years of the same failed Moore's Law policies. Hasn't worked under Bush and won't work in the future.
"We decided to tweak the two-dimensionality by applying a very large magnetic field, using the largest magnet in the world at the Magnet Lab in Florida," he said. "You only have access to it for about five days a year, and on the third day, something totally unexpected popped."
Gervais's "pop" was the startling transformation of a two-dimensional electron system inside the semiconducting material into a quasi-three-dimensional system, something existing theory did not predict.
"It's actually not quite 3-D, it's an in-between state, a totally new phenomenon," he said. "This is the kind of thing the theoreticians love. Now they're scratching their heads and trying to fine-tune their models."
They should write a new book: "Dimension-hacking for fun and profit."
Free unix account: freeshell.org
... a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
Hmmm... this is definitely going to extend Moore's Law in home computing... sure. ;)
The sub prime state... You can pay for it and sell it but when you look at it hard enough it's not really there...
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Helium makes your voice sound funny if you breathe it in.
Moore's law... hell this is going to extend the calculation of the user's home heating/cooling costs past what will fit on a single page.
On the upside, calculating that kind of cost may lead to the finding of a new prime number or two.
> following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth.
Isn't the Earth itself the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth?
If it were actually talking about the magnet itself, then it could be argued that the Earth's magnet is it's core, which isn't *on* Earth but *in* Earth ... but they said 'magnetic field', so I think they're wrong.
Max.
ice-9
Nullius in verba
Anyone who does not know what K is won't read the article.
The article is verry misleading, its only about an new discovered (quantum) stateof matter.
Altough that in itself is big news for those who study the matter the world is made of.
It doesnt mean that every discovery in this field lead to better chips.
It's actualy quite unlikely that we would get such chips under search weird environment conditions running.
So it might be usefull for our understanding of matter, and that might be of some help.
Otherwise we could also say it possibly cures cancer and Hiv, and maybe our next energy source.
What i'm saying is the news is scientific but the reporting was verry un-scientific.
For those reporters better just stay with the fact, your not a fund raiser !!
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
For any given particle, you can't know its exact position and velocity. Particles can never reach absolute zero because then you would be able to determine their position since you know their velocity would thus be zero given they have no energy by definition of absolute zero. An extension of that then is if you know a particle's velocity you will never be able to determine its position. If you can't determine its position you can't determine whether it is really outside a vacuum. You may be able to say it isn't in the middle of the volume which represents the vaccum but at the boundary you can't say for sure whether the particle is on the inside of the vacuum or outside. This is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. An absolute zero temperature vacuum is definitely impossible due to the uncertainty principle.
It seems there is an error in reasoning there. Line of thought begins with "I have a particle (implying ''I know particle's approximate position at first'') and then I cool it down until it reaches absolute zero...oops, can't do that!".
No, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle merely states that if a particle has zero temperature you won't be able to find it (determine its position).
Position and velocity are not the only physical properties of a particle. There is, e.g. the mass of a particle. Could this be the explanation for elusive "Dark Matter", space is not empty but filled with heavy particles at 0K ?
Better quote something there fella. I have sigs turned off on general principles and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
It doesn't make sense to talk of "N times colder" full stop. 3K isn't a measure of coldness, and to define coldness as the reciprocal of temperature is arbitrary. "...a device cooled to 1% of the temperature of intergalactic space" reads perfectly well and uses well-defined terms.
"Insightful"? What the...? Either you don't know cooling is a HUGE problem in outer space, either the mods didn't get the joke.
Hint: here on earth, we cool stuff by dumping the extra heat onto air molecules, and keeping the air fresh (e.g. with a fan) so that there's a continuous supply of air to dump heat on. In outer space, there is pretty much nothing to dump the extra heat on. Know how thermos bottles work? That's right, with vacuum. Outer space is the best insulation there is ;-)
Explain to me how something can be '100 times as cold'?
This opens up a whole new realm of deceptive advertising.
-Purpler than the next leading brand!
-Now with 30% more AWESOME!
Who are you trying to kid here?
Seriously, Moore's Law failed about the time of the 3ghz P4 chip.
I think that the only truthful thing Steve Balmer has said in the last 30 years was when he pointed out that all Intel is doing is giving user multiple processors because they can't make the cores any faster by them selves.
Faster-Higher-Stronger.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Okay, let's do the math here, if space is ~3K, then that puts this 'new transistor' material at about .03K or 3 HUNDREDTHS of a degree above absolute zero.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm willing to be the properties of this will not be the same at room temp, or even close to room temperature. And I rather doubt the performance of the transistors will outweigh the eneergy requirements needed to keep it at that cold a temp.
So, why is this news exactly?
Pax Vobiscum
I'll nominate your post for the first use of this new mod category...
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
... hence why TFA specified intergalactic space.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Here's the problem... when you say things like "x times SMALLER than" and "x times COLDER than" people think "oh, something TIMES something... I have to multiply."
But with diminishing comparisons (smaller, colder, etc) you're actually multiplying by a decimal, which most people regard as DIVISION.
Worse, when you say something like "100 times colder than" people think not just "I have to multiply" but rather "I have to multiply something by 100".
Let's save everyone a headache and if you want to make a comparison, use the most explicit form possible. In this case, "1/100th the temperature of intergalactic space" (or just give us the damn Kelvins).
To paraphrase an AC's earlier post:
In fact I've got up to ten times MORE awesome in my little finger than you have in your whole body.
It does ache a bit in cold weather, though.
Just to make sure everybody knows: The necessary magnetic field and temperature applications are required only during the creation of the crystals.
--Edward Dassmesser
Nothing new here, it was taken from the alien spacecrafts, Roswell July 7 1947 incident and other crashes, we did have that material for many years just didn't know how to use it. Us gov also have they hands fully into this project but you will never see that in the daylight / If you look at all of the reports from abduction cases and other first person reports, they all say crystals are being used.. now go ahead and start the flame engine /
Shame on you. Running around RTFA'ing. Making the rest of us /.'ers looking bad.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
What implications does this have for the big bang? I assume that before the big bang, space was colder, thusly opening the door for for creation of this type of matter before the universe heated. Does this have implications beyond computing?
In space, no one can hear you scream, eh?
Does space even have a temperature? Vacuum insulates rather well and the biggest problem of many space-born devices (think ISS) is getting rid of excess heat. The famous Star Trek line of "It's very cold in space" doesn't really match the reality.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
That certainly lends itself to easy mass-production! Heck, we can all do that in our basements!
Last night I played a blank tape at full volume. The mime next door went nuts.
According to wikipedia, Intergalactic space is between 100000 and 10000000 K. Reading comprehension much?
I don't want my PC to be running between 1000K and 1000000K, that's way too hot!
"...following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
Should the word "artifical" have been used in that sentence or are they saying they've got a magnet in a lab somewhere that is string enough to pull every compass needle on the planet?
"It was discovered using a device cooled to a temperature about 100 times colder than intergalactic space, following the application of the most powerful continuous magnetic field on Earth."
They should have that working by Tuesday. Intel and AMD no doubt already have patented the chip and are building the foundries.
Right.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!