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Future Phones May Use Vacuum Tube Chips As Silicon Hits Moore's Law Extremes (inverse.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A team of researchers want to replace transistors with vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes are nothing new, however the ones in development at Caltech's Nanofabrication Group are a million times smaller than the ones in use 100 years ago. "Computer technologies seem to work in cycles," Alan Huang, a former electrical engineer for Bell Laboratories, told the New York Times. "Some of the same algorithms that were developed for the last generation can sometimes be used for the next generation." Dr. Axel Scherer, head of the Nanofabrication Group, said to the New York Times on Sunday, "Ten years ago, silicon transistors could meet all our demands. In the next decade, that will no longer be true." He argues silicon transistors can only take us so far. Vacuum tubes, for comparison, use tiny metal tubes that can control the flow of electricity. They're especially intriguing to researchers as they can provide a better solution to silicon transistors as they can consume less power and take-up a much smaller footprint. The report mentions they have the potential to bring an end to Moore's Law, even if silicon transistors show no signs of disappearing. For example, Lockheed Martin published new cooling methods in March that could help cool chips with tiny drops of water. With that said, Boeing has invested in researching vacuum tube chips. They may appear in the aviation industry before 2020, but it's unlikely we'll see Caltech's research appear in smartphones anytime soon.
No, they wouldn't be as resistant on average, because yes, the biggest factor is size.
That being said, EMP resistance gets 'complicated', and it's easier to stick a small chip inside a faraday cage than a room sized monster.
I don't read AC A human right
Steam never went away. Power plants that use heat (e.g., nuclear or gas) generally heat water to make steam and pass it through a turbine. Yeah, it's not the same thing as the huge piston steam engines with brass fittings that you're thinking of; but it's still steam.
Vacuum tube amplifier tech here with 40+ years experience.
Here's a 25uF @ 800V/900V-surge "firecracker" style.
https://www.tubesandmore.com/p...
More stuff here.
https://www.tubesandmore.com/
Even more here.
http://www.fliptops.net/
Another option is to series-connect two 450V or 500V capacitors to meet the 800V minimum rating requirement. I recommend placing a 100K Ohm 1-watt metal-film resistor across each of the two series-connected capacitors to make sure the voltage across each capacitor divides equally, as the ESR (effective resistance) of individual capacitors varies slightly from unit to unit and causes the voltage to divide unequally without the resistors which could possibly result in one of the capacitors "seeing" excess voltage. Usually not a problem, but why take a chance with a shortcut?.
The resistors also act as a safety feature as "bleeder" resistors to prevent accidental shock from a stored charge long after power has been removed by slowly discharging ("bleeding") the capacitors after power is removed.
As a safety tip, *always* keep one hand in your pants-pocket when performing tests/adjustments on live circuits to prevent completing a path to ground through one's chest. Human hearts don't take kindly to high voltage passing through them.
Be careful and good luck!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
And stand on the same side foot as the hand you're working with. Ground path not through chest.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A vacuum tube is a macroscopic device. An electrode is heated, electrons shoot out and their trajectory is controlled by charged grids.
On microchip scales, it's all about quantum physics. Electrons are wave-like, they tend to teleport through obstacles, change size as they are heated or cooled down, really weird stuff. The math probably works but I wouldn't call these things "vacuum tubes" when the very notion of everything that makes up a vacuum tube is challenged at these scales.