• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

MIT researching the replacement of silicon for transistors

zekrahminator

McLovin
Joined
Jan 29, 2006
Messages
9,066 (1.31/day)
Location
My house.
Processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Brisbane @ 2.8GHz (224x12.5, 1.425V)
Motherboard Gigabyte sumthin-or-another, it's got an nForce 430
Cooling Dual 120mm case fans front/rear, Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro, Zalman VF-900 on GPU
Memory 2GB G.Skill DDR2 800
Video Card(s) Sapphire X850XT @ 580/600
Storage WD 160 GB SATA hard drive.
Display(s) Hanns G 19" widescreen, 5ms response time, 1440x900
Case Thermaltake Soprano (black with side window).
Audio Device(s) Soundblaster Live! 24 bit (paired with X-530 speakers).
Power Supply ThermalTake 430W TR2
Software XP Home SP2, can't wait for Vista SP1.
MIT researchers estimate that in roughly 10 to 15 years, we will hit a wall when it comes to increasing the performance of silicon. And so MIT got funding from Intel and began designing the next transistor material. Indium gallium arsenide, or InGaAs, is so far a very promising candidate. It moves electrons several times faster then silicon, does so in a 60nm transistor, and at a much lower voltage (.5 volts). Such promising material is much more fragile then silicon, which may cause problems during manufacturing. Intel, one of the sponsors of the project, is absolutely thrilled with the current results of the project.
The 60-nanometer InGaAs quantum-well transistor demonstrated by Professor del Alamo's group shows some exciting results at low supply voltage (e.g. 0.5 volts) and is a very important research milestone.
MIT will show off what it has at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting on December 11. MIT predicts that it will have working transistor prototypes using the new technology in 2 years.


View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 

Alec§taar

New Member
Joined
May 15, 2006
Messages
4,677 (0.69/day)
Location
Someone who's going to find NewTekie1 and teach hi
Processor DualCore AMD Athlon 64x2 4800+ (o/c 2801mhz STABLE (Ketxxx, POGE, Tatty One, ME))
Motherboard ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (PCIe x16, x4, x1)
Cooling PhaseChange Coolermaster CM754/939 (fan/heatsink), Thermalright heatspreaders + fan built on (RAM)
Memory 512mb PC-3200 DDR400 (set DDR-33 for o/c) by Corsair (matched pair, 2x256mb) 200.1/200mhz
Video Card(s) BFG GeForce 7900 GTX OC 512mb GDDR3 ram (o/c manually to 686 core/865 memory) - PhaseChange cooled
Storage Dual "Raptor X" 16mb 10krpm/RAID 0 Promise EX8350 x4 PCIe 128mb & Intel IO chip/CENATEK RocketDrive
Display(s) SONY 19" Trinitron MultiScan 400ps 1600x1200 75hz refresh 32-bit color
Case Antec Super-LanBoy (aluminum baby-tower w/ lower front & upper rear cooling exhaust fans)
Audio Device(s) RealTek AC97 onboard mobo stereo sound (Altec Lansing ACS-45 speakers - 10 yrs. still running!)
Power Supply Antec 500w ATX 2.0 "SmartPower" powersupply
Software Windows Server 2003 SP #1 fully patched, & massively tuned/tweaked to-the-max (plus latest drivers)
Gallium Arsenide I had heard about, a decade ago... it does have a faster "0/1" switching state than silicon does, but has some drawbacks from what I recall, in that in working w/ it there is SOMETHING extremely hazardous about it (poisonous hazmat stuff)...

APK
 

gamer210

New Member
Joined
Dec 26, 2005
Messages
136 (0.02/day)
Location
University of Texas San Antonio
Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66 GHz
Motherboard ASUS P5Q Pro
Cooling Zalman CNPS 9700
Memory Mushkin XP 4GB DDR2 1066
Video Card(s) 2x Radeon HD 4850
Storage Seagate 750 GB w/ 32MB Cache
Display(s) Dell 2007WFP Rev A04 S-IPS
Case Tuniq 3
Audio Device(s) Asus Xonar DX
Power Supply PC Power & Cooling 610
Software Microsoft Windows Vista Business 64-bit
I also have heard that Gallium Arsenide is more expensive to produce. I thought that Silicon Germanium was just as effective as Gallium Arsenide, but it was cheaper to produce.
 

tofu

New Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2006
Messages
483 (0.07/day)
Location
GTA
System Name Dinosaur
Processor 939 Athlon X2 4200+ @ 2.64GHz
Motherboard Sapphire RD580
Cooling OCZ HDT-S1284
Memory Corsair XMS 2x1GB CE-6 DDR480 2.5-3-2-8
Video Card(s) Zotac GTS 450 1GB 850/1700/1850
Storage OCZ Vertex 2 60GB + Hitachi 320GB + Seagate 1TB
Display(s) 2x Samsung 740B 17" LCD
Case Antec 300
Audio Device(s) ALC880
Power Supply Antec Truepower New 650
Software W7 Pro X64
Wasn't Intel investing in research for the application of Carbon Nanotubes?

And now wtf are they doing with something that is poisonous, hard to manufacture :wtf:
 

overcast

New Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2006
Messages
733 (0.11/day)
Processor AMD Opteron 165 @ 2.7ghz Stock Voltage
Motherboard ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
Cooling Stock Opteron
Memory OCZ PC4000 EB Platinum 2GB
Video Card(s) ATI X1900XTX
Storage 2 x Western Digital 74gb Raptors
Display(s) NEC 990B 19"
Case Antec P150
Audio Device(s) Onboard
Power Supply Seasonic S12-500
Software XP 32bit
What happened to IBM's new Silicon Germanium transistor technology? It was demonstrated like 6 months ago. They had them operating at 500Ghz under extreme cooling and 350Ghz at room temperature.
 
Joined
May 20, 2004
Messages
10,487 (1.39/day)
What happened to IBM's new Silicon Germanium transistor technology? It was demonstrated like 6 months ago. They had them operating at 500Ghz under extreme cooling and 350Ghz at room temperature.

That was a single transistor. Having millions of transistors (a CPU) run at 350GHz is still impossible and that won't change for a long time.
Also I believe it was longer than 6 months ago :)
 
Top