In Australia we have two major parties: the Liberal Party, who are the conservatives, and the ALP, which I've heard stands for "Another Liberal Party".
I read through those articles and they don't say much about this technology at all.
That's true, the Xconomy article is the most technically informative available for free, you'll have to subscribe to one of the relevant journals to get anything more detailed. I added those to point out that this is not new, it already has funding, and they're at the stage of developing commercial fabrication processes. There is a clear, prefectly normal development history here, you being unaware of it doesn't mean it's a scam.
I'm guessing because the articles provide no mention that this technology is better than the rest, then it isn't.
WTF? Let me make it easy for you:
Normal silicon, gray and translucent, absorbs only about 60 percent of sunlight striking its surface, reflecting the rest back into the air. Treated correctly, the black variety absorbs 96 to 98 percent of the light that hits it. (Harvard Gazette)
He said that tests so far have shown that black silicon is far more efficient at producing a current than normal silicon, but that the mechanism remains unclear. (LA Times)
I am optimistic that for traditional designs of solar cells, it could give a 15 to 20 percent improvement with respect to their present efficiency. The performance of some solar cells with novel design could be improved even more dramatically. (Physorg)
...the detector's photoresponse extends to 1.6 m, well beyond the 1.07 m provided by standard silicon. (Photonics.com)
...a material called 'black silicon' that is 100 to 500 times more sensitive to light than conventional silicon, in both the visible and infrared spectrums (front page of Slashdot)
So either you didn't read anything, or don't know what constitutes "better" in this regard. I certainly can't believe anyone could be daft enough to expect engineering-quality information from the popular press.
I'm sure this dark silicon is hundreds of times more light than pure silicon, or distilled water for that matter. That doesn't mean much.
Correction: that's completely meaningless gibberish. But assuming you meant to type "more light sensitive", since when does distilled water have photovoltaic properties in the visible spectrum? Or pure silicon, for that matter?
Anyway, if you want something more meaningful, Google the sensitivity of a low cost silicon photodiode and multiply that by 100. Surely that isn't too much of an intellectual challenge.
I'm sure they've found something interesting, although it sounds like it's probably not economically practical.
Putting a silicon wafer under a laser sounds considerably cheaper than molecular beam epitaxy or SOI to me, and those processes have been successfully industrialised.
However, you're correct: at the moment, it isn't economically practical...no small scale experimental fabrication setup is.
That's why I suspect this article is designed to sucker in investors and buyers through hush-hush and hype. It's designed more to disinform than inform.
Really?
Saylor says he hopes the company won't have to raise any more venture capital to do that.
Hmm, who to believe? Anonymous Coward with dubious comprehension skills trying to double guess their motives, or a direct statement from CEO Stephen Saylor...tough choice, I don't think (regardless of how gob-smackingly awful Adobe Premiere is).
When you follow the history, you'll see the article designed to "sucker in investors" was published in 2006: mission accomplished. The purpose of this article is to announce that prototypes are shipping to developers, in the hope
Please note they did not say it is 100 x more sensitive than all other detectors in the visible, just more sensitive than silicon, which itself is not sensitive in the visible without doping.
Small point: untreated silicon does not mean pure elemental silicon, it means it hasn't gone through this process. Obviously, if the type of silicon they're comparing this to has no sensitivity in the visible spectrum whatsoever they can't claim any relative improvement...100 times nothing is still nothing.
To be fair, the highest sensitivities are only possible when the material is biased, which makes it behave like an avalanche photodiode but with a much simpler, and therefore cheaper, structure. The quoted efficiency increase of 15-20% for standard design PV cells suggests (to me, at least) that black silicon may not be able to deliver high currents in this mode, so "100 times" is probably technically true, but highly conditional.
As for comparisons with other types of sensors, if this was in IEEE Spectrum I'd expect performance charts; appearing in the New York Times business section, I'm astonished they spelled "silicon" without an "e" on the end.
This is just legalese hype that is precise that hides that the true value.!!
It's legalese only if you interpret certain words in a way that defies logic.
It has already been a paying proposition for ten years for its employees, agents, consultants, lawyers, etc.
SiOnyx was formed in 2005, not 1999. Before that the team had to get funding the same way as everyone else at Harvard: peer assessed grant applications, with results subject to review. That doesn't eliminate the possibility of it being a sham, but sustaining the illusion of success for that long in that environment would be an impressive feat.
This announcement could suck in enough new funding to stretch that another decade.
I seriously doubt it. This isn't an announcement of a fundamental discovery (that was years ago), this said they're currently shipping working devices to developers. That's a really big claim to falsify, especially if it's used as the basis for procuring further investments (think "fraud").
Besides, FT xconomy A:
Saylor says he hopes the company won't have to raise any more venture capital to do that. "The first strategic relationships are going to be with very well-aligned industry leaders, so those will lead to development relationships and eventually product-revenue relationships," he says. The company will be "careful with cash" until it can grow to the point that it "becomes interesting to someone outside the venture investing community," he says.
Maybe it's reverse psychology, but that doesn't sound to me like they're seeking investors. What it does sound like is they're trying to attract interest from semiconductor manufacturers to develop the process at a production level, which makes sense when you consider that the odds of a startup raising enough capital to build a commercial scale fabrication plant are pretty much zero.
I'm not saying that they don't have anything real: just that these things are often profitable for someone even when they don't pan out (and most don't).
The fact that VCs collect fees bears no direct relationship to the viability of any given project. And the majority of businesses fail*, not just high tech startups. Generalisations like this tell us nothing about which companies and technologies will be successful, so they're of little value.
Scepticism is perfectly reasonable for any new technology, but black silicon has already passed a significant number of checks to get to this stage, and a lot of that was before any prospect of commercialisation. On that basis I believe the article's claims, but without specific details about the development path, business plans and licensing arrangements making a judgement on the commercial viability one way or the other is pure uninformed speculation based on spurious assumpions.
*The figure I've heard is 50% of all businesses fail within 6 months.
If this is as good as they say, they wouldn't have any secrets and would spill the beans.
The fundamental research was done a long time ago(with picture of prototypes); I've read articles about it in Electronics and Wireless World several times over the years, so it's hardly a secret. Any potentially patentable critical element is going to be kept under wraps, obviously.
I think they have found some weaknesses that restrict the usefulness of this technology.
Or they spent 3 years on R&D fixing those weaknesses, like the article says.
Further information of note from the NYT article:
SiOnyx is already commercializing sensor-based chips as a technology development platform for other companies and for use in next-generation infrared imaging systems.
So we're told: 1- There's a decade of peer-reviewed research behind the technology. 2- They have funding and partners already. 3- They're shipping parts now, not at some unknown time in the future.
Either this is real, or Dr Mazur et al are engaging in an exceptionally elaborate, very public and career-ending series of lies (and it's not as though SiOnyx will be a paying proposition if the tech doesn't work). The part of the operation that does look suspect is their web site (Flash warning), but that doesn't prove anything about the physics involved.
The power to drive the LCD cells is negligable compared to the backlight, and both combined are less by the variation in power consumption of some larger CRTs, so based on usage figures from BOSPOOMA* there's a net reduction.
Besides, I'm sure Microsoft wants us to pay for their OS before we consider buying a fancy new monitor (though I don't mind disappointing them).
*Bureau of Statistics Pulled Out of My Ass, the most widely cited source of information on the web.
A black desktop reduces power consumption of CRTs, so Microsoft deserve credit for their environmental thinking and consideration for the power bills of those who can't afford LCD monitors or legitimate Windows licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm getting old...
In Australia we have two major parties: the Liberal Party, who are the conservatives, and the ALP, which I've heard stands for "Another Liberal Party".
No...I bought one of those, and I had to supply the computers myself! That totally destroyed my faith in Apple trolls.
Your licensed copy of Leopard is surely licensed only for the machine with which it was sold
Awesome! I'm going to order ten of these $129 Macintoshs. Doesn't say what processor they use, but at the price I figure it doesn't matter...
I read through those articles and they don't say much about this technology at all.
That's true, the Xconomy article is the most technically informative available for free, you'll have to subscribe to one of the relevant journals to get anything more detailed. I added those to point out that this is not new, it already has funding, and they're at the stage of developing commercial fabrication processes. There is a clear, prefectly normal development history here, you being unaware of it doesn't mean it's a scam.
I'm guessing because the articles provide no mention that this technology is better than the rest, then it isn't.
WTF? Let me make it easy for you:
So either you didn't read anything, or don't know what constitutes "better" in this regard. I certainly can't believe anyone could be daft enough to expect engineering-quality information from the popular press.
I'm sure this dark silicon is hundreds of times more light than pure silicon, or distilled water for that matter. That doesn't mean much.
Correction: that's completely meaningless gibberish. But assuming you meant to type "more light sensitive", since when does distilled water have photovoltaic properties in the visible spectrum? Or pure silicon, for that matter?
Anyway, if you want something more meaningful, Google the sensitivity of a low cost silicon photodiode and multiply that by 100. Surely that isn't too much of an intellectual challenge.
I'm sure they've found something interesting, although it sounds like it's probably not economically practical.
Putting a silicon wafer under a laser sounds considerably cheaper than molecular beam epitaxy or SOI to me, and those processes have been successfully industrialised.
However, you're correct: at the moment, it isn't economically practical...no small scale experimental fabrication setup is.
That's why I suspect this article is designed to sucker in investors and buyers through hush-hush and hype. It's designed more to disinform than inform.
Really?
Hmm, who to believe? Anonymous Coward with dubious comprehension skills trying to double guess their motives, or a direct statement from CEO Stephen Saylor...tough choice, I don't think (regardless of how gob-smackingly awful Adobe Premiere is).
When you follow the history, you'll see the article designed to "sucker in investors" was published in 2006: mission accomplished. The purpose of this article is to announce that prototypes are shipping to developers, in the hope
Please note they did not say it is 100 x more sensitive than all other detectors in the visible, just more sensitive than silicon, which itself is not sensitive in the visible without doping.
Small point: untreated silicon does not mean pure elemental silicon, it means it hasn't gone through this process. Obviously, if the type of silicon they're comparing this to has no sensitivity in the visible spectrum whatsoever they can't claim any relative improvement...100 times nothing is still nothing.
To be fair, the highest sensitivities are only possible when the material is biased, which makes it behave like an avalanche photodiode but with a much simpler, and therefore cheaper, structure. The quoted efficiency increase of 15-20% for standard design PV cells suggests (to me, at least) that black silicon may not be able to deliver high currents in this mode, so "100 times" is probably technically true, but highly conditional.
As for comparisons with other types of sensors, if this was in IEEE Spectrum I'd expect performance charts; appearing in the New York Times business section, I'm astonished they spelled "silicon" without an "e" on the end.
This is just legalese hype that is precise that hides that the true value.!!
It's legalese only if you interpret certain words in a way that defies logic.
A physicist who is an expert in detectors.
What makes me doubt that?
It has already been a paying proposition for ten years for its employees, agents, consultants, lawyers, etc.
SiOnyx was formed in 2005, not 1999. Before that the team had to get funding the same way as everyone else at Harvard: peer assessed grant applications, with results subject to review. That doesn't eliminate the possibility of it being a sham, but sustaining the illusion of success for that long in that environment would be an impressive feat.
This announcement could suck in enough new funding to stretch that another decade.
I seriously doubt it. This isn't an announcement of a fundamental discovery (that was years ago), this said they're currently shipping working devices to developers. That's a really big claim to falsify, especially if it's used as the basis for procuring further investments (think "fraud").
Besides, FT xconomy A:
Maybe it's reverse psychology, but that doesn't sound to me like they're seeking investors. What it does sound like is they're trying to attract interest from semiconductor manufacturers to develop the process at a production level, which makes sense when you consider that the odds of a startup raising enough capital to build a commercial scale fabrication plant are pretty much zero.
I'm not saying that they don't have anything real: just that these things are often profitable for someone even when they don't pan out (and most don't).
The fact that VCs collect fees bears no direct relationship to the viability of any given project. And the majority of businesses fail*, not just high tech startups. Generalisations like this tell us nothing about which companies and technologies will be successful, so they're of little value.
Scepticism is perfectly reasonable for any new technology, but black silicon has already passed a significant number of checks to get to this stage, and a lot of that was before any prospect of commercialisation. On that basis I believe the article's claims, but without specific details about the development path, business plans and licensing arrangements making a judgement on the commercial viability one way or the other is pure uninformed speculation based on spurious assumpions.
*The figure I've heard is 50% of all businesses fail within 6 months.
If this is as good as they say, they wouldn't have any secrets and would spill the beans.
The fundamental research was done a long time ago(with picture of prototypes); I've read articles about it in Electronics and Wireless World several times over the years, so it's hardly a secret. Any potentially patentable critical element is going to be kept under wraps, obviously.
I think they have found some weaknesses that restrict the usefulness of this technology.
Or they spent 3 years on R&D fixing those weaknesses, like the article says.
Further information of note from the NYT article:
So we're told:
1- There's a decade of peer-reviewed research behind the technology.
2- They have funding and partners already.
3- They're shipping parts now, not at some unknown time in the future.
Either this is real, or Dr Mazur et al are engaging in an exceptionally elaborate, very public and career-ending series of lies (and it's not as though SiOnyx will be a paying proposition if the tech doesn't work). The part of the operation that does look suspect is their web site (Flash warning), but that doesn't prove anything about the physics involved.
Surely "cyber-vulture" is a buzzard word...
Think about it: would you rather see her coming or going?
Has or is?
What servers? We never had any servers *whistles nonchalantly while walking to brand new Mercedes*
Since it's the financial industry you probably won't be working there long :P
Did someone say Princess?
Is there another kind of drag that needs to be reduced?
Yes, they had too many transvestites on board.
Slashdot is a poor substitute for Daiquiris, but the combination is a good idea. Cheers!
The power to drive the LCD cells is negligable compared to the backlight, and both combined are less by the variation in power consumption of some larger CRTs, so based on usage figures from BOSPOOMA* there's a net reduction.
Besides, I'm sure Microsoft wants us to pay for their OS before we consider buying a fancy new monitor (though I don't mind disappointing them).
*Bureau of Statistics Pulled Out of My Ass, the most widely cited source of information on the web.
So this is MSochism, step one. Step two is writing a kinky boot sector to your C: drive.
FYI, WGA doesn't stand for "Windows GPL Alternative".
Yet.
A black desktop reduces power consumption of CRTs, so Microsoft deserve credit for their environmental thinking and consideration for the power bills of those who can't afford LCD monitors or legitimate Windows licenses.
Trust me, you don't want it. The public liability insurance is insane.
Most manuals I've seen recently are barely compatible with English right now.
Doesn't sound impossible to me, considering how many /.er's buttons Apple manages to push remotely.
What? Use social interaction to simply fix a problem that could equally be solved by the use of needlessly complex technology!? ARE YOU MAD?!?
Make sure the cable is looped around something that is relatively solid and unmovable.
Such as the gamers themselves. Oh, wait...