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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.
Hmmmmmmmm. Or should I say "hummmmmmmm..."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"but it's unlikely we'll see Caltech's research appear in smartphones anytime soon."
I am reading on a phone right now you insensitive clod!
love is just extroverted narcissism
Call me a geek if you like, but I really enjoy watching this video of a guy hand-making triode valves (AKA vacuum tubes), it's somehow very therapeutic. Yep, only vaguely on topic, but what the hell, we're talking about vacuum tubes.
Oh no... it's the future.
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.
I find that the results from numerical computations on today's transistor-based CPUs often have an undesirable "harshness".
Vacuum tube CPUs will hopefully yield richer, more mellow computational results.