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Graphene Transistors Clocked At 26GHz
KentuckyFC writes "A team at IBM has built the first high quality graphene transistors and clocked them running at 26 GHz . That doesn't quite knock silicon off its perch. The fastest silicon transistors are an order of magnitude faster than that but the record is held by indium phosphide transistors which have topped 1000 GHz. But it's not bad for a new kid on the block. It took silicon 40 years to get this far. By contrast, the first graphene transistor was built only last year. IBM says 'the work represents a significant step towards the realization of graphene-based electronics.' (Abstract)."
pencil < pen < sliderule < calculator < computer < supercomputer < pencil
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This might be a practical limit to the GHz race. There's only so much cicuitry that an electron can go through in that short amount of time. Someone work out the math but in that short amount of time an electron can travel less than a feet(30cm) I'm guesstimating. Sorry got an exam in a couple of hours, don't want to break out the paper and pencil just now.
But it's not bad for a new kid on the block. It took silicon 40 years to get this far. By contrast, the first graphene transistor was built only last year.
Though mobile phones are not as powerful as mainframe computers, they're not doing badly considering they've only been a relatively short time.
Therefore it stands to reason that the mobile phones of the future will doubtless be more powerful than the mainframe computers of the future!
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Running 26 GHz is nice, but... Does it run Linux ?
IBM and Columbia are working together on this. Their grant calls for them to push this up to 50 THz.
Oh, and what was done last year was a single electron transistor... normal transistors were available just about as soon as graphene was, in 2004.
Wow. 1000 Ghz... are we getting anywhere near light frequencies now? It would be cool to have transistors able to switch light. Right now laser data transmission has to be converted to electrons, then switched at a much lower frequency. If we could eliminate that step and improve efficiencies... well...this would kick ass!
It's a lot harder to get a switching transistor (for digital circuitry) to operate at high speeds than for a transistor to show gain as an RF amplifier.
26 GHz is incredible for switching circuitry, but it's nothing if you're talking RF signals nowadays. I'm guessing that this was an RF amp given the comments of other transistors being faster in the article summary.
There is a comment about "clocked at" which implies digital switching, but that could easily be a clueless journalist that has no idea of the difference between transistors in clocked digital circuitry and transistors as RF amplifiers.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Except that although nobody exactly knows what a foton is, it is known not to be an electron. And these transistors happen to be designed for the latter...
After reading this Intel engineers are busy restoring Pentium 4 design from backup tapes.
839*929
It may have taken Silicon 40 years to reach that level, but compare Silicon transistors to the thing it replaced - vacuum tubes - they had totally phased them out within a decade
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
At some point, we have to conclude that we are good. Silicon is likely the best material for chips, and will continue to stay that way. other materials have been tried (Germanium was the first) but silicon took precedence because it was cheap and efficient, and I don't see any reason to change that
You mean photon? We know a hell of a lot more about photons than "it's not an electron".
Don't confuse you not knowing what a photon is with physicists not knowing what a photon is. Don't confuse not knowing what something "is" with the inability to make working devices with them.
Say it with me...SiliCONE. SiliCON boobs would be ridiculously uncomfortable. Of course, if you used the hydrogenated amorphous variant, you might be able to work out a way to turn them into flat panels as well. Since it's Slashdot, I'll leave the next joke for someone else.
OMG I can't believe he said that. I couldn't understand before your post.
Apparently, the clock that is used to measure the speed of this transistor is even faster. Why not try to make transistors of the same material as the clock? I assume it's some kind of crystal.
1000 nm light has a frequency of 3e15 Hz, or 3000 THz. The real thing with optics is to be able to do the processing on light signals instead of electron signals, even in this case the transistors would run at tens to hundreds of GHz. The switching frequency they are talking about here is basically how small they have gotten the internal resistances and capacitances so that the time constant is very very very short. Running one transistor at that kind of speed is one thing, running one hundred million is something else.
graphene = 26 GHz
"The fastest silicon transistors are an order of magnitude faster than that but the record is held by indium phosphide transistors which have topped 1000 GHz"
Correct me if i'm wrong, but an "order of magnitude faster" would make silicon clock out at 26,000 GHz, would it not?
26,000 GHz > 1000 GHz
Does this mean that in the future we will be able to take sequestered carbon and make electronics out of it? And diamonds are an allotrope of carbon too, let's make jewelry out of it too. It probably uses too much energy to make carbon bond in that way. I don't know the specifics.
Well I'm an idiot, must be too many finals, its 3e14 Hz = 300 THz,for a 1000nm photon, I hope.
This is precisely the kind of innovation we need to get to the kind of AI we want. Giving us the ability to do the right-hemisphere's job is what these kinds of transistor speeds will give us.
Give him a break; He's obviously an extra and has never seen Star Trek.
Extras
Would the boobs run Linux?
If IBM can also produce graphene out of greenhouse CO2 they'll also get the thankfulness from the Whole World!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
My pencil will be finally worth something.
I do NOT want Calista Flockhart pouring hot grits anywhere.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Except that although nobody exactly knows what a foton is, it is known not to be an electron. And these transistors happen to be designed for the latter...
It's a flat mattress that sits very low to the ground and are very popular in Japan. Everyone knows that!
Hmm, silicon implants for a flatter chest... sounds backwards, even if you can use them as a monitor.
OK, if you are an undergrad deciding on your choice for thesis and postgrad studies, graphene is great. There is a lot of companies, including Nokia, that pour tons and tons of money into graphene research. It's the easiest grant money to get these days.
That said, there's a reason you don't see much GaAS integrated circuits, even though GaAs has been around for decades, and has much higher carrier mobility (and therefore top speeds) than silicon: it's hard to devise a good IC technology for GaAs. For graphene the problems are way, way bigger than that even. I have seen some attempts of my colleagues (I research in nanosci) at fabricating graphene transistors, and while they can make discrete components with a certain limited rate of success, integration is not even on the horizon. Maybe other people around the world use technologies that are more promising, but it will take a great effort to knock silicon off the top spot for the time being. In fact, I predict a brighter immediate future for Si/Ge and some III/V group compounds as the successors of pure Si, as the next big thing in IC tech.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Allow/Deny?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
You're never going to have clock frequencies in the light range, for the simple fact that light waves are shorter than the diameter of an atom and thus bigger than any transistor.
Luckily switching light doesn't require transistors that fast. For example, an LCD display switches light directly, without first converting it to electrons. That uses electricity to switch light, but the idea has already been extended to switching light with light in the lab.
I tell ya, Graphene-based CPUS will even be able to run Vista at a decent clip.
-Z
-Z
The summary mentions graphene transistors "clocked" at 26 GHz. Though the summary author could be using "clocked" to simply mean "measured" (like you clock someone's speed in the 100m dash), it is easy to confuse this with the clocking that occurs normally in digital circuits.
What is measured at 26 GHz here is the f_T of the transistor, which is a measure of the frequency limit at which point the transistor provides unity gain (or, in other words, past which point the transistor attenuates, rather than amplifies, a signal). It is essential in RF circuits to be operating well below the f_T of your transistors in order for your oscillators, amplifiers, and the like to perform properly and produce minimal noise.
In other words, yay graphene! It's taking its first steps toward becoming a viable alternative to Si, which is always good to have, if even just on the back burner.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
They cant match my 9000 TERRAFLOPS OF RAM!1!!
Finally, a socially acceptable reason to stare at boobs!!!
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Picture the scene.
A newly silicon enhanced woman arrives at the beach, removes top, lays on her back....
and deploys combination sunshades / solar arrays from her chest!
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
i just switched uni to be able to write my master thesis in elementary particles and i still wonder if that was the right thing to do, after all at my old uni they're doing research on graphene.
it's not that i found it boring, but i thought particle physics is more interesting. still particles and solid state physics are a bit similar so i could still switch back to do my phd (if i wanted to do that which i don't know yet) in SSD, but well... *scratches head*
They already have resistive touch sensitivity!?!
That's a futon...
Does she play the Mac startup chime when she's fully charged?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
What is the institution that you left (the one where you did graphene research)?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This is so totally going to happen!
I agree
Ya, but anything new benefits from that 40 years of experience.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So if someone finds a way to transmit information faster than the speed of light, we win?
Just for revence, please advise:
What's the expected time for light to travel once around the globe as if it were flat and didn't have to slow down by bouncing off something?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"But it's not bad for a new kid on the block. It took silicon 40 years to get this far. By contrast, the first graphene transistor was built only last year. "
Sorry, but this is completely and utterly POINTLESS.
The state of materials engineering technology now is orders of magnitutde ahead of where it was in the late 60's and early 70's. So why is it such an "achievement" that a new technology, built upon the foundation of an established technology for an older material is so much better than the first generation of the old technology?
That's like comparing a McLaren F1 to a Model T instead of a a Lamborghini.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Roughly speaking... Lets call it 25,000 miles around the earth, 1.61km/mile, speed of light (C) is about 300,000,000 m/s... If I did the math right, 0.134 seconds. Good luck.
You wouldn't use a transistor that fast to switch light. It still switches electricity. But what you could do with it is control visible light light we control radio waves right now. Instead of just doing amplitude modulation on a laser carrier wave you could do frequency modulation, phase modulation, all sorts of cool stuff.
1 THz falls a little short of visible light, but the THz range is actually really interesting. It's a region of the electromagnetic spectrum where it's hard to produce light with RF techniques and with optical techniques, so it's largely unexplored territory.
We used to say the same thing about SiGe, but that's starting to make its way into CMOS technologies. Standard 100% bulk Si is hitting the wall of what's possible. Even if geometries are 10-20% bigger, but provide better switching speeds, on currents or lower off currents, we're going to have to keep working in order to improve. Further improvements, like our accomplishments to date, will not be easy. I don't know what advantages GaAs or graphene will have to them once their issues are worked out (you can bet several advantages will have to be compromised to ramp production), but I know that GaAs has higher defect rates, so that's one thing that's going to have to improve before we see it changing ICs as we know them.
There's no way you could describe today's technology that we take for granted to an expert 20 years ago and have them believe you. Copper and SOI before 2000 (in 1997, some experts predicted each were 10+ years away, to say nothing of merging them)? A return to metal gates? Vertical FETs?
Don't confuse not knowing what something "is" with the inability to make working devices with them.
But... nobody knows exactly what the meaning of "is" is.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
... is unfortunately much slower than optical lithography.
Now I can run Crysis at full! (maybe 50fps)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
My favourite meme was "The Ministry of Agriculture is not in charge of Gundam". I'm a bit sad that didn't catch on like the rest.
Mr Clinton, I had no idea you posted on /.! How do you feel about the Obama Victory? Is Hillary pissed?
Don't confuse not knowing what something "is" with the inability to make working devices with them.
Yeah, we had lightbulbs well before we had a good working model of how electricity really works.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Yes, but Graphene seems to be little more than a curiosity at the moment, given just how %*$&ing difficult the stuff is to produce.
We know how to produce minuscule quantities of the stuff at tremendous expense, but have absolutely no clue how to make it in bulk, as the current process simply doesn't scale, and nobody's been able to devise a better way to do it.
There's a whole slew of interesting applications for Graphene waiting to be developed if we can figure out how to manufacture the stuff.... and there's no guarantee that mass production of the material will be remotely feasible.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
SiliCON boobs would be ridiculously uncomfortable
Yeah, but rock solid.
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
Consider that graphite's structure and its constituent graphene layers were known about, over 100 years ago. Imagine if someone back then had said, "gee, let's take some adhesive tape and see if we can separate the layers with it..."
I'm surprised Slashdot hasn't reported on Prof T P Ma's proposal for Unipolar CMOS, which is structured to rely purely on negative channels, due to the higher electron mobility in comparison to hole mobility. I'm wondering what the electron-to-hole mobility ratio is for graphene?