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Law-Defying Transistor Smashes Industry 'Limit', Measures Just 1nm (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: U.S. researchers have unveiled the world's smallest transistor reported to date, combining a new mix of materials, which makes even the tiniest silicon-based transistor appear big in comparison. The team, led by the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, designed the minuscule transistor with a working one-nanometer gate -- far surpassing any industry expectation for reducing transistor sizes. In the scientific study, MoS2 transistors with 1-nanometer gate lengths, published today in the journal Science, the researchers describe a prototype device which uses a novel semiconductor material known as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). The transistor structure uses a single-walled carbon nanotube as the gate electrode and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) for the channel material, rather than silicon. "The semiconductor industry has long assumed that any gate below 5 nanometers wouldn't work, so anything below that was not even considered. This research shows that sub-5-nanometer gates should not be discounted. Industry has been squeezing every last bit of capability out of silicon. By changing the material from silicon to MoS2, we can make a transistor with a gate that is just 1 nanometer in length, and operate it like a switch," explained study lead Sujay Desai.
In huge quantities, cost is just another engineering problem, which needs to be solved once.
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At what cost?
Letting the terrorist win... for the childern... in soviet russia.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Call Chuck Norris - he'll kick that transistor's ASS!
On a more serious note, wouldn't devices with such small geometries need some really heavy shielding to prevent destruction by cosmic particles? Heck, I have to wonder if at that size even background radiation would be a risk factor.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
... when they actually have a working product. These lab projects don't quality as realizable, I remember the same promises were made about CPU's getting to 10+GHZ that never happened and CPU speeds hit a brick wall around 2006 because heat and leakage became too much which meant going much beyond 5Ghz became a pipe dream.
This..
>The semiconductor industry has long assumed that any gate below 5 nanometers wouldn't work, so anything below that was not even considered.
This is simply false.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
This is great news! The information density with these 1 nanometer transistors should be such that I can simulate simulate the universe with enough accuracy for sentient beings to eventually come into existence. Eventually they will advance sufficiently enough to question whether or not they are in a simulation, and they will begin efforts to test how accurate my simulation is in order to determine its existence. Then, just when they discover that the simulation is flawed in some way, and thus detectable, I'll pull the plug and start a fresh simulation.
Better known as 318230.
Let me use it to make and play the world's smallest electric violin.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
... Apple should be able to knock at least another 2-3mm of thickness off the iPhone with these things.
Log in or piss off.
Telepresence with VR and whatnot is way faster than a plane trip.
1nm is the gate length, not the size of the entire transistor. Typically-quoted transistor sizes are actually the process nodes, which are half of the distance between the same feature in neighboring transistors, so they're not comparable to a measurement of an individual transistor. That said, I seem to recall a story from over 10 years ago, about someone creating a single 1nm transistor. The trick, now as then, is to use lithography to create billions of them connected to one another to form integrated circuits, and the main limitation in size reductions has been lithography tech rather than transistor tech.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
from the paper's abstract: "Simulations show an effective channel length of ~3.9 nm in the Off state". what does this mean? that the gate, in it's off state, needs 4nm or it will start interfering with nearby gates?
The word Gate is not referring to a logic gate (which is what it sounds like you're inferring), but to the Gate terminal of the transistor. When the correct polarity of voltage is applied to the Gate, the field effect causes a channel of charge carriers to form between 2 other terminals, the Source and Drain, allowing current to flow between them. The channel length refers to the distance between the Source and Drain terminals.
The channel length (as well as other parameters like the width, charge carrier mobility, etc.) determines how much current can flow between the Drain and Source when a given voltage is applied (i.e. resistance). By applying higher voltage to the Gate, you are narrowing the "effective" channel length (lowering the resistance).
When you switch transistors on and off, you are basically charging and discharging capacitors, which takes time. How much time is determined by the time constant, RC (resistance x capacitance). So, shorter channel length = lower resistance = smaller time constant = faster charge/discharge = higher speeds. That's why we make transistors smaller to make computers faster.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Audiophile gear had this for years!
Muons, which are more massive than elections, give more bass presence and smoother transitions.
You can run at lower current. Given the smaller cross section this has to happen anyway as there is less room for electrons to flow.
http://michaelsmith.id.au