Slashdot Mirror
Computer Chips Made of Wood Promise Greener Electronics
alphadogg writes: Researchers in the U.S. and China have developed semiconductor chips that are almost entirely made out of a wood-derived material. In addition to being biodegradable, the cost of production is much less than conventional semiconductors. According to the NetworkWorld report: "The researchers used a cellulose material for the substrate of the chip, which is the part that supports the active semiconductor layer. Taken from cellulose, a naturally abundant substance used to make paper, cellulose nanofibril (CNF) is a flexible, transparent and sturdy material with suitable electrical properties. That makes CNF better than alternative chip designs using natural materials such as paper and silk, they argue in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications."
And it specializes in Bamboolean operations...
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
So they replace the substrate with wood ... instead of silica ... the argument being that wood is plentiful and biodegradable and biologically safe ...
Except ... Silica is more plentiful and more biologically safe since its essentially biologically inert.
As an advantage, silica is NOT biodegradable, because I want my chips to last, not fall apart over the winter when it sheds its leaves.
Silica is NOT the issue for the environment in CPUs, its the production materials and doping agents that are horrible on living things and hard to dispose of.
So congrats ... you solved a problem ... wait, no, you didn't really do anything productive. Not seeing any redeeming quality about a chip produced this way and seeing plenty of down sides.
Whats next, you're going to try and convince me that the aircraft carrier made of sawdust and ice they tried to construct during WWII really was a brilliant plant for a warship sailing in the south pacific?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
since global ore reserves of current substrates such as silicon and aluminum dioxide are rare and almost depleted.
Another advantage of cellulose based wafers is that using traditional Japanese technology, they can be made even smaller, and in pretty shapes like swans.
Next time they tell you that you'll set your computer on fire if you overclock, you better believe them.
Now if they can just replace solder and thermal paste with duct tape and concrete patch....
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Paper-production is actually pushing humans to plant more trees, and that trees act as carbon sinks. Killing a tree is not a huge problem since you immediatly replace it
Not so true. Not only trees have a limit in the amount of carbon they can sink, but if you cut a 100years old tree, and replant it, the new trees is not gonna sink as much carbon as the previous tree.
Some research on the subject... https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/ne...
Not actually true. As part owner of a tree farm we've looked into carbon credits, etc. CO2 sequestration is highest in the first few years of growth and then gradually tapers off. You probably get more CO2 sequestered in the first 20 years than the next 80.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A Beowulf shrubbery of these!
And so ...
The next Intel chip will be called 'Fargo'.
How can you tell how old your iPhone is? Call it and count the rings.
Landscapers are becoming in demand because of their ability to provide wood chips.
Play Nintendogs, now with more bark.
Search functionality vastly improved for native binary trees.
God spoke to me
Most tree farms are on poor soil, often on mountainous terrain where you really can't plant valuable crops or food easily. They often make them on land that was just logged, actually.
gives a whole new meaning to the phrase bit rot
For the highest amount of CO2 sequestration you need the plant matter to fall into an anaerobic bog and slowly sink into the ground as new stuff lands on top. After a few hundred million years, an advanced society then digs it as coal and oil and burns it, dumping all the carbon back into the atmosphere.
There's a huge amount of stored carbon in the ground. It's only a problem when you burn it. Burn current plant matter and and you're only returning the carbon that came from the air recently, not the carbon that's been saved up for millions of years.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Not actually true. As part owner of a tree farm we've looked into carbon credits, etc. CO2 sequestration is highest in the first few years of growth and then gradually tapers off.
What? This is an outright lie. I just covered this here recently, and the precise opposite is true. Mature trees fix more CO2 than young trees. Mature forest fixes more CO2 than young forest. I first found that this was true for Sequoia Sempervirens, but I dug around and found that this was true for the vast majority of trees. You can read the majority of my comments on this subject in the discussion reakthrough In Artificial Photosynthesis Captures CO2 In Acetate. As I recall, there was another discussion which followed soon after in which I provided additional citations.
Now, are you telling lies deliberately, or simply repeating lies in ignorance because you were too lazy to go do the research?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
the habitats provided by older trees are much harder to replace.
these have an effect on wider parts of the environment such as keeping soil in place or supporting other flora and fauna. This can have much wider effects that are very hard to gauge.
also not all trees have the same effect on the nutrients in the soil around them , replanted trees tend to be the ones that grow fast but do not necessarily compliment their surroundings as much as their predecessors and often deplete them. Most woodlands are a diverse mix of various species of tree which
came about because thats what worked for the woodland , replacing it with what works for humans or economics is not such a good plan IMHO.
We have loads of fibres we can reuse if we want to but we dont
[site]