Slashdot Mirror
18 nanometer transistor
chrisr was the first of many to tell us that less than a week after the BBC reported Bell Labs had developed a 50 nanometer transistor, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have announced an 18 nanometer transistor. Best of all, the team has decided to not patent the design, hoping it will lead to faster acceptance.
I can wait to wire a couple of these transistors together an hook up a Beowulf cluster on them.
Hey, do you think we can port linux to one of them(to a single transistor)?
Windows sux! I hope Bill Gates doesn't try to force us to upgrade to these new transistors so we can run Windows 2k.
Do you think the NSA can use these transistors to monitor our emails? BOMB, NUCLEAR, IRAQ, CHINA, ALLAH.
What did I leave out?
When guys are patenting obvious, or worse, prior art like "multimedia transmitted over the internet" and actually getting people to pay up, while other guys are increasing the cost-effectiveness of the information infrastructure by, oh, lets say a factor of 10, and can't receive substantial returns in support their talent for future risk-taking innovation -- the patent of invention has gone the way of the patent of nobility: It is obsolete.
What made the patent of nobility obsolete was the corruption of the nobility by politics. What, apparently, has made the patent of invention obsolete is the corruption of invention by legalistics.
We still need nobility. In technological civilization, nobility is in the creative act. The problem is the politicians and lawyers have demonstrated they are, as a cultural phenomenon, hostile to true nobility.
The creative act deserves the respect, reward and protection traditionally reserved for nobles.
Fortunately, creators, themselves, possess great power.
Seastead this.
Actually I reported that a French team made some 20 nanometers transistors a month ago but of course it didn't make it on Slashdot, as of course only the US can make innovations, and anything else doesn't exist.