New Transistor

[tw]

Silicon once was said to have speed limitations. Therefore much research was conducted on (and some rather secret ICs have been created using) Gallium Nitrate, Silicon Nitrate, and Gallium Phospherous technologies. Also repeatedly experimented with were 'Silicon on Saffire' and Diamond based semiconductors. Speeds necessary to switch light will be necessary to maintain Moore's law.

Details here are sketchy and I have not read any of this in industry publications. Don't know if this will really be the breakthrough technology equivalent to a world's first transistor. However, potential here is so significant that I am posting this heads up:
Intel Reports a Research Leap to a Faster Chip
(Current NY Times articles require registration even though the article (and registration) cost nothing. Once registered, all current NY Times articles may be read without futher registration bureaucracy.)

[Troubleshooter]

I wonder if they might be working with these guys as well:

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Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel.
Next up: the computing industry.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...iamond_pr.html

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[Happy Monkey]

That's an awesome article. The sooner DeBeers gets knocked out, the better.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally posted by Happy Monkey
That's an awesome article. The sooner DeBeers gets knocked out, the better.

I'm not terribly worried about DeBeers as much as I'd like to see an additional path to better technology exploited. Even producing them just for tech would kill DeBeers in the long run.

[tw]

Originally posted by Troubleshooter
I wonder if they might be working with these guys as well:

There is nothing really special about diamonds. It is believed that if DeBeers did not monopolize the market, then a two carat diamond would sell for $5.

In the meantime, diamond growth is said to be found on the blades sold in the Gillette Mach 3.

Plasma physics is more than just making semiconductors. But it is Intel's mastery of semicondutor construction (ie vapor deposition) that keeps it ahead of AMD. This is where the leadership in semiconductors is obtained and why quantum physics is so important to the future of these companies.

Diamonds and 'silicon on sapphire' are options for transistor substrates (what a transistor is built on). But what remains, the most important material in transistor construction (why we still use silicon), is something more important than diamonds - glass. Only recently have transistor research companies (IBMs failed process and Intel's still secret process) provided new materials that can replace glass. Because glass is so important and because nothing is as good as glass, then we must still use silicon transistors.

[Bitman]

The problem is that it takes time and money to get from research to production. And in that time, ordinary CMOS is usually improved to exceed whatever promises the new stuff made. So we really won't see this stuff until silicon gives up. And that probably won't happen until the laws of physics say "stop! This far, and no further!" At which point the new materials won't help either.

I suspect we might see the the diamond and sapphire stuff, just because it can handle the huge temperatures that the 50 GHz chips will produce.

[aerion_13]

I bet this questions been asked?

How do I get rid of popups? I've run Spybot and deleted files. I've uninstalled some programs. What's left? I can't figure out what site it's coming from. Oh and I deleted the trash and restarted the computer.

Still getting popups.

[Undertoad]

Use Mozilla Firefox and select the option "Block Popup Windows"

[Elspode]

The Google search bar has a popup blocker. If that doesn't work, you've got some nastyware doing it, and when that happened to my wife last weekend, it took 24 hours and the eventual purchase of $40.00 worth of software to kill it off. *After* I'd tried all the freeware stuff out there.

[tw]

Originally posted by Bitman
I suspect we might see the the diamond and sapphire stuff, just because it can handle the huge temperatures that the 50 GHz chips will produce.

Silicon's advantage is that silicon dioxide is glass - one of the best insulators available. Current demands are for new high-k dielectric superior to glass. IBM had one from a Dupont material. But in production, it pealed off the wafer. IBM abandoned to process with terrible consequences to its customers. Intel is said to have a secret material; but has yet to even say what material is uses.

We were designing an early 1980s computer using silicon on saphire. Technology is that old. But diamond and saphire based semiconductors still have limitations such a current leakages not found in silicon - because of glass.

Largest reason for heat is also same reason for speed limitations - leakage - which is why new high-k materials are required. Still nothing has come close to replacing the king - silicon.

So what was that new transistor? Have yet to read anything. Just that the latest (51st) International Solid State Circuits Conference appears to have suggested Moore's law has hit a brick wall. Not much room left to make transistors smaller. Atomic sizes put a limit there. Maybe in massively interconnected ICs in one package or layering transistors or breakthrough material. Talk is now of one trillion transistors in one package.

Just that nothing promising appeared yet that will continue Moore's law. So much for the new Intel optics transistor.

Moore's Law demands a 10 gigahertz computer very soon. This is mind boogling to one who once worked in the kilohertz and single digit megahertz range - and used Mecl technology for 10 Megahertz - exotic - digital ICs. At 10 Ghz, tiny traces now become tuned antennas. Computer chips of 150 watts heat dissipation are an unfortunately possibility. At what point can this no longer be advanced? An so the question of sublight processors. Or has Moore's linear law now started to become a decaying exponential?

[tw]

That new transistor is really a modulator. Light is output into two channels. Using a quantum physics concept, light in one channel is slowed by applying a charge. Light from both channels is combined. If in phase, then light is output. If not in phase, then outputs from two channels cancel - light is not output. Intel may use this transistor to communicate data in buses throughout a microprocessor.

Very few actually reported this transistor. AT&T (or was it Lucent by then) had once developed a light switch where a semiconductor micromachine turned a mirror. Took long to swtich on and off. Could be used to change data paths among different fiber optics. And then AT&T quashed it. At least Intel's idea shows promise. And is located where innovators are appreciated as assets - not as expenses.

[tw]

Limits on copper wire are about 15 Gigahertz. Computers are already working at 3 Gigahertz. In order to plan for the processor of 2015, Intel is now making plans for and building experimental IC that use optical busses to replace copper. Connection of 10 inches and less will require optics. By 2015, processors should be running in the 20 gigahertz range.