HP Researchers Discover Something Better Than Transistors!
Correspondent:: "nu-monet v7.0"
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 18:10:04 -0700
--------
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGB5IYUCN4E.html
Challenging a basic tenet of the semiconductor industry,
researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. have demonstrated a
technology that could replace the transistor as the
fundamental building block of all computers.
The devices, called crossbar latches, could be made so
small that thousands of them could fit across the
diameter of a human hair, enabling the high-tech
industry to continue to build ever-smaller computing
devices that are less expensive than their predecessors.
For years, engineers have been able to pack more and more
smaller transistors onto a fingernail-size silicon chip.
The rate of integration, first predicted by Intel Corp.
co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, has driven computer
performance and prices for more than 30 years.
But the pace of Moore's Law can't continue forever, and
the high-tech industry has been scrambling to develop
workarounds for the day - expected in a decade or so -
when transistor dimensions become too small for the
materials commonly used today.
"If we're going to extend Moore's Law for another several
decades, we've got to have an alternative strategy," said
Phil Kuekes, one of the paper's authors at HP Labs. "This
is the final piece of the puzzle in what HP has been
putting together as such a strategy."
The smallest features of today's silicon-based transistors
are about 90 nanometers long, a nanometer being roughly one
hundred-thousandth the width of a human hair. The crossbar
latch, by comparison, can work in a space of about 2 to 3
nanometers.
The HP research, reported in Tuesday's Journal of Applied
Physics, scraps the transistor entirely. In its place is
basically a series of platinum wires crossed opposite
directions. At the junctions are molecules that in the HP
research happen to be steric acid.
"It's metal and molecules. Nothing else," Kuekes said.
"We're getting away from the physics of silicon."
Like in a transistor, an electrical signal that passes
through a crossbar latch is manipulated to perform logic
functions. The latest research shows that the technology
also can be used for amplifying a signal, allowing multiple
functions to be applied.
"The power of this device is not when it's by itself. It's
when it glues together other pieces of logic," said Duncan
Stewart, another HP Labs scientist and study co-author. "As
soon as you're able to do that, we call that a computer."
The researchers have not glued together multiple crossbar
latches, though they say it's something they're continuing
to pursue. They expect it to be commercially viable as
early as 2012. The latches are formed through a specialized
stamping process for nano-sized imprints.
They also must persuade an industry built on transistors
that an alternative technology can be just as effective,
said Stan Williams, director of Quantum Science Research
at HP Labs and another of the paper's co-authors.
"There came to be a mantra that you have to have transistors
to build computers," he said. "A latch is a different way
of achieving that same function, but it turns out it has
significant advantages over a transistor."
The crossbar latch not only works at a much smaller scale
than a transistor but also can do more, he added.
"In order to do the same thing that a latch can do, you
actually need many transistors," Williams said.
In fact, other researchers have been focused on building
molecular transistors, which are much more challenging to
build at such a small scale, said James C. Ellenbogen,
principal scientist in the Nanosystems Group at the MITRE
Corp.
"This may enable the field to proceed toward nanoprocessor
demonstrations and applications more rapidly and at lower
cost," he said.
It also could prove to be less expensive to build because
engineers can more easily work around defects that arise
during manufacturing than with those that occur during
silicon fabrication, where defects are avoided at great
cost.
But crossbar latches aren't going to replace today's
silicon chips anytime soon. At first, they would likely
be used for memory and later for specialized devices. They
also will have to integrate with today's silicon chips,
which(sic)
"Transistors will continue to be used for years to come
with conventional silicon circuits," Kuekes said, "but this
could someday replace transistors in computers, just as
transistors replaced vacuum tubes and vacuum tubes replaced
electromagnet relays before them."
--
"YOU BELONG TO US NOW!"
"GET DOWN WITH MY SICKNESS!!"
--Kino Beman, brand name
Correspondent:: "iDRMRSR"
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 20:15:02 -0500
--------
We so BADLY need a newer model saucer to crash in New Mexico!
[*]
-----
Correspondent:: "Assco"
Date: 1 Feb 2005 13:27:06 -0800
--------
Those vacuum tubes on the neck of the Frankenstien monster
worked pretty good, not to mention the two electromagnet relays
on the head -- with these new nanoprocessing transistors we could
make them so small that they'll get all mixed up together with
all the blood and chloresterol pumping in our veins and be powered
entirely by the unused energy wasted by thousands of
misfired synapses -- crossbar latches can replace the optic filaments,
firing direct digital photosynthetic data direct to the brian where
it will be downloaded to memory and randomly accessed at
will in a matter of less than a second then we can burn 'em onto
plastic media and use those as frisbees.
Correspondent:: Zapanaz
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 15:42:47 -0800
--------
On 1 Feb 2005 13:27:06 -0800, "Assco" wrote:
>Those vacuum tubes on the neck of the Frankenstien monster
>worked pretty good, not to mention the two electromagnet relays
>on the head -- with these new nanoprocessing transistors we could
>make them so small that they'll get all mixed up together with
>all the blood and chloresterol pumping in our veins and be powered
>entirely by the unused energy wasted by thousands of
>misfired synapses -- crossbar latches can replace the optic filaments,
>firing direct digital photosynthetic data direct to the brian where
>it will be downloaded to memory and randomly accessed at
>will in a matter of less than a second then we can burn 'em onto
>plastic media and use those as frisbees.
and people would still spend the whole day watching tv and eating
potato chips. but they would do it at SUPERSONIC SPEEDS.
--
Zapanaz
International Satanic Conspiracy
Customer Support Specialist
http://joecosby.com/
DOWN WITH AHMAD CHALABI, MAN OF CATS!