I suppose the real test of his theory will be if oil supplies regenerate. Still, I thought the interior of the earth was fairly well understood. Iron core generating a magnetic field and all that.
Oil fields cannot be pumped out completely. Plus the oil can be leaking in from another field. It's extremely hard to tell if the oil is indeed coming from sources deep in the planet.
We understand the interior of the earth in a general sense. Not everything is known. The earth's magnetic field comes from a dynamo formed by the liquid outer core. But does anyone know why the magnetic field flips every once in a long while (short in the geological sense)? A little off the original topic, but the point is we don't know everything.
Indeed you are correct. However, most astronomers believe that the sun and the planets contain (actually, probably made mostly of) material from an older star that went supernova. This star existed long before the solar system, and when it exploded, it left behind a cloud of stellar material -- mostly hydrogen but also some heavier elements. That cloud eventually collapsed to form the solar system.
So when the solar system formed, it had these heavier elements already.
In any case, a star of the sun's mass cannot produce heavier elements than maybe the first 10 elements of the periodic table. A giant star is necessary for anything up to iron. And beyond iron requires a supernova.
If I remember correctly, GaAs uses MESFETs, in which the gate is laid directly on top of the channel.
Another problem with GaAs is that p-channel devices are horrendously slow (like a factor of ten compared to the n-channel devices -- somebody correct me if I'm wrong). With Si, the p-channel devices are only a third the speed of n-channel devices of the same size.
Perhaps the way to go is to supercool traditional Si technology, thereby increasing the electron/hole speed ceilings (1.0x10e7 cm/s at room temperature). The changes in the fabrication equipment will be significantly cheaper and the current generation of circuit designers would not need to be completely retrained.
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You realize that the Pentium II and Pentium III lines use the Pentium Pro architecture, right?
I suppose the real test of his theory will be if oil supplies regenerate. Still, I thought the interior of the earth was fairly well understood. Iron core generating a magnetic field and all that.
Oil fields cannot be pumped out completely. Plus the oil can be leaking in from another field. It's extremely hard to tell if the oil is indeed coming from sources deep in the planet.
We understand the interior of the earth in a general sense. Not everything is known. The earth's magnetic field comes from a dynamo formed by the liquid outer core. But does anyone know why the magnetic field flips every once in a long while (short in the geological sense)? A little off the original topic, but the point is we don't know everything.
Indeed you are correct. However, most astronomers believe that the sun and the planets contain (actually, probably made mostly of) material from an older star that went supernova. This star existed long before the solar system, and when it exploded, it left behind a cloud of stellar material -- mostly hydrogen but also some heavier elements. That cloud eventually collapsed to form the solar system.
So when the solar system formed, it had these heavier elements already.
In any case, a star of the sun's mass cannot produce heavier elements than maybe the first 10 elements of the periodic table. A giant star is necessary for anything up to iron. And beyond iron requires a supernova.
Or says the current theory....
Presumably the channel length geometry would also shrink -- reducing the capacitance, and consequently the power needed to drive the chip.
If I remember correctly, GaAs uses MESFETs, in which the gate is laid directly on top of the channel.
Another problem with GaAs is that p-channel devices are horrendously slow (like a factor of ten compared to the n-channel devices -- somebody correct me if I'm wrong). With Si, the p-channel devices are only a third the speed of n-channel devices of the same size.
Perhaps the way to go is to supercool traditional Si technology, thereby increasing the electron/hole speed ceilings (1.0x10e7 cm/s at room temperature). The changes in the fabrication equipment will be significantly cheaper and the current generation of circuit designers would not need to be completely retrained.