Reinventing The Transistor For Molecular Computing 102
unnique writes "MIT's Technology Review, has an article on HP's research into finding a new way to make transistors smaller, and further stretching Moore's law." The article has some nice illustrations of the nano-componentry they're working on, too.
Re:Impossible! (Score:1, Funny)
Theyy are also very likely full of beer and other spirits.
For the record :)
we have been over this, thank you (Score:5, Informative)
its really more of an OBSERVATION than a LAW. a THEOREM at best. While it has held true through my short lifetime so far, it certainly does not qualify as a LAW.
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
A theorem is better than a law ! It can't be wrong ! What could be better than a theorem ?
"Moore's law" is a postulate perhaps, not a theorem (since it hasn't been proven)
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Laws are correlates of facts.
Theorems can be wrong. They simply haven't proven that way, yet.
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:5, Informative)
Theorems are only proven wrong when the axioms they derive from are invalid (it happens sometimes in Physics, but never in Mathematics, where you decide what axioms you want to accept).
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you think that Intel, IBM, et al are working so hard to continue to shrink their electronics?
It's because of Moore's law.
If they break Moore's law, they are facing some serious jail time.
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:4, Funny)
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:2, Funny)
I really don't think we have. (Score:5, Funny)
Gordon Moore made his famous observation in 1965, just four years after the first planar integrated circuit was discovered. This law was finally proven in 1989 with the release of the vernable 486(TM) DX processor from Intel.
Due to incredible market forces and other mysterious occurences that remain unexplained to this time, chip speed doubled every two years. This remained true even through the infamous Intel factory shutdown in 1991.
The plant was closed for a period of seventeen months due to widespread worker illness. The engineers at Intel had been under tremendous pressure to design a new chip that would double the speed of the impressive 486 DX. Sadly, the engineers were stumped. Adding to this incredible pressure was the unexplanable illness that spread about the facillity like wildfire. This illness would render an otherwise healthy person unconscious for a period of seventeen months. The afflicted person would then rise as if nothing had happened.
Intel enginners were some of the last to be affected by this mysterious illness, and when it struck, there remained little choice but to shutter the plant.
Seventeen months passed, and the lights of the Intel factory remained dim. Offerings by Cyrix and AMD began to overtake Intel's flagship 486 processor.
Suddenly, the enginners began to regain unconsciousness one by one. Strangely, they all had a similar vision while under the illnesses grasp. They begain to call each other on the telephone, comparing notes on what they had 'seen'.
Cautiously, they began to draw plans - plans that would save the great Intel from ruin.
Work went quickly, as each enginner 'knew' what the others were thinking. Soon, the plant was reopened, and fabrication of of the new design began. The engineers collectively decided that the chip would be called the "Pentium". Asked a short time before his unseemly death, an enginner said, "It just HAD to be named that. I don't know why. But we all agreed."
Sadly, the chip that propelled a limping Intel into the forefront of CPU technology was the last that any of the 'Pentium' designers saw to fruition.
Tragedy struck the enginners as they were on their way to the company picnic. The bus that they were riding in plummeted off an embankment into a river, drowning all of them.
Gordon Moore's famous 1965 observation was voted into law in 1994, one year after the release of the new chip. The punishment for violators is death by mysterious circumstance. No one has yet broken Moore's Law, and woe be unto those that do.
Thanks,
Jonathan Frakes
P.S. In your ear, Mr. Smarty-pants.
Re:I really don't think we have. (Score:1)
No point fearing the inevitable, my friend.
Re:I really don't think we have. (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, I'm only going to say this one time, so don't forget it: Moore's law applies to the size of the gates, not the speed!
For some reason, people seem to think that it applies to speed, but it is simply an observation on gate density. Gate speed has never followed Moore's observation for more than a very short period of time. The reason today's chips are so much faster is that (a) gate speed has increased due to more efficient designs and better materials, (b) gate density has increased roughly according to Moore's "law", and (c) die size has increased due to better manufacturing processes, since the better yields allow larger dies to be cost-effective.
Moore's law is a great trend, but in reality it has nothing to do with speed increases, except that decreasing the size of a gate decreases propagation delays. The improvements in speed that have been made are more due to the number of transistors on a die, which have shot up due to (b) and (c), while each gate is faster due to (a), and only slightly (b). We have faster gates, on a bigger die, at a higher density.
Re:I really don't think we have. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I really don't think we have. (Score:1)
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:2)
its really more of an OBSERVATION than a LAW. a THEOREM at best. While it has held true through my short lifetime so far, it certainly does not qualify as a LAW.
Always an interesting cultural weirdness, this hierarchy of "law" beats "theory" beats... I don't know.
That's completely unknown in the rest of the world. Most of these words are just synonyms for each other, there's no official definition of what a "law" is. Sometimes part of a theory is named "Foo's Law", "Bar's Theory", or whatever, but those
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:3, Interesting)
Moore's Law seems as good as Hooke's Law to me.
Hooke's Law for a spring: Force on a spring is proportional to the distance stretched from equilibrium. Until its stretched so far that the law doesn't work any more...
Re:we have been over this, thank you (Score:2)
That disclaimer, however, was not included in the original statement of Hooke's Law:
I really feel like I'v
Fuck your post! (not u personally only your post) (Score:1)
Mod me down if you want. If i cared that much I would have posted anonymously. But this needs to be read.
Do I really have to read the stupid Moores Law isnt a law post every damn time someone mentiones moores law? Then asshole moderators mod it up to +5, even though it isnt interesting, and definately not informative. Ironically it is these same assholes who will probally mod this post down, even though it is more interesting than your shit ass moorles law isnt a law post.
Idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Idea (Score:1)
But your joke is much more humourous.
Re:Idea (Score:1)
Now make replace the glass tube with a buckyball.. (Score:1)
I hate to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
Crossbar technology (Score:1)
technology that they speak of relates to
the 'crossbar' phone-switching technology
of the pre-ESS era?
I have to disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you think chip innovation is coming from? Intel, AMD, IBM... Are these small firms? No.
Universities and small firms can only do so much research because as the sizes of transistors and chips decreases, fabrication and research costs increase exponentially.
And if you read the article, it says that 12.5 million was provided by the govt and matching funds by HP.
Do you think HP is breaking the bank by providing that kind of money?
This endeavor is not Itanium sized in terms of a cash sink.
You got to start somewhere. If you think the microprocessor industry is where it is without its share of research and faliures, its not true.
Results? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Results? (Score:5, Insightful)
Far-out technology ten or twenty years from plausible implementation makes a much better story then technology that's appearing on the shelf today, which is drowned out by the marketing message and if you're lucky, some semi-meaningful buzzwords.
However, the electronic industry is actually quite good about converting technology into actual products. It just isn't talked about as much because it's so "ho-hum". Let me remind you that 2,400,000,000,000 [compusa.com] bits that fit in the palm of your hand is something so amazing that you really can't even understand it in any real way.
Look into the technologies in current use for hard drive manufacturing, processor manufacturing, and the other such hardware you use day to day (including non-computer stuff). You'll find enough stuff to make a 1970's sci-fi author wet their pants. It just doesn't make good copy.
Re:Results? (Score:2)
It tastes great; and it's less filling.
KFG
Molecular Valves! (Score:2, Funny)
Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
Nanotube chips and double helix slips. (Score:3, Interesting)
on 200 gigabit nanotube memory cubes.
I am not so sure I want my chips to be living organisms. On the otherhand I am certain that the choice between faster organic computer and slower inorganic computer would be a no-brainer. I'm just rooting for the inorganics right now. Thought then there is ice-nine goo and all that to be concerned about which is not much better than a computer virus destroying all life forms.
A 'puter [not including DNA synths which incidentaly should be cautiously defended since they are potential hacking targets to 3li4e geno-hackers] passing a virus directly to a human (or some other animal) becomes a probability when the computer has a DNA factory as part of its makeup.
Amplification seems like a reasonable quick solution to hard problems of routing traveling salesmen, but make sure you don't get any of it on you.
Re:Nanotube chips and double helix slips. (Score:1)
Sounds like a pipe dream (Score:1)
Re:Sounds like a pipe dream (Score:2)
"nano-componentry"? (Score:4, Funny)
Timothy, perhaps you are confused by standard English usage patterns. You see,
toilet [reference.com] -> toiletry [reference.com] and
bigot [reference.com] -> bigotry [reference.com],
but
apple [reference.com] -> apples [reference.com] and
component [reference.com] -> components [reference.com].
Re:"nano-componentry"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, componentry is used in the fabrication of components. It becomes a part of finished components. That's why it's found on 30,000 Google pages.
Re:"nano-componentry"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well yes, that was my point after all.
Likewise, componentry is used in the fabrication of components.
OK, that sounds plausible at least. Now, are you able to back up your claim by providing some links where "componentry" is used in this sense, rather than in the "I think it's a more marketable word than components" sense? My random sampling of Google hits seems to favor the latter.
Duh. (Score:2, Funny)
suff.
1. A place for: bakery.
2. A collection or class: finery.
3. A state or condition: slavery.
4. Act; practice: bribery.
5. Characteristics or qualities of: snobbery.
It would then be proper to say this thread is the height of stupidery.
Re:"nano-componentry"? (Score:3, Funny)
Pedant -> pedantry
Re:"nano-componentry"? (Score:2)
That should be:
Though the actual process is:But... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm very happy the way I am now, thank you...
****!!!! REDUCE YOUR SIZE !!!!**** (Score:4, Funny)
All natural organic supplements!
$49.95 FOR A FULL MONTHS SUPPLY!
Cool! Now all we need... (Score:1)
Re:Cool! Now all we need... (Score:1)
interesting, what is the next breakthrough? (Score:5, Interesting)
How small can something be? It can be down to the molecular level. How fast can something go? Up to the speed of light. So eventually the fastest "transistor" will be composed of individual molecules, with changing states caused and communicated by light (photons).
Electricity was stated in the article as "the way" that information will be input and extracted from tiny transistor, but I think this paradigm will change! Once you get to a certain speed and smallness, electricity loses its ability to transmit information. This happens due to sluggish time response properties of the medium (capacitance and inductance and other jazz) and wave interference and delay of the electrical wave of electrons flowing.
Once a wavelength (directly related to frequency) becomes a certain fraction of the distance it has to travel, the electrical path becomes a "transmission line" instead of a "lumped element." Basically you are trying to send waves of electricity (1's and 0's) down the line too fast for the physical capabilities of the medium. So that's one more thing that complicates the process of making computers smaller and faster--getting the information out and transmitting it to other components.
That's why I was mentioning a new paradigm...because I was thinking of reading Isaac Asimov's stories that mentioned his ultimate computer, Multivac, which filled up miles and miles of space underground. He extrapolated the ideas that made the cutting edge computers of his time into what he thought the future's computer would be like--namely, huge. But of course he couldn't predict the advent of the transistor and later the microprocessor which changed everything and made everything shrink instead of getting bigger....by the way--some parts in computers, like the connectors and traces, are already becoming speed bottlenecks for some of the reasons mentioned...
The wires are still macroscopic (Score:2, Interesting)
This means that Moore's law will still hold, unless the interconnects are molecules as well.
IAAMEE
reality vs hype (Score:4, Interesting)
There is also the problem that molecules are delicate objects. You simply can't make millions of molecular switches and expect them all to work. With Si all the switches work often enough that you can make chips. Williams plans on using fault tolerant architectures to get around this problem.
So, HP's program isn't as crazy as a lot of stuff I see at conferences. But it is still far fetched, and I think it will fail because it is competing with Si VLSI instead of aiming for some niche.
Si technology is damned good, and trying to compete with it has been a losing game for decades now. (e.g. GaAs and Josephson junction computers). "Novel" technologies pay off when used for an application for which Si is unsuitable (optics with GaAs, magnetic field detection with Josephson junctions).
However, I will eat my hat if in 20 years (10 years after Moore's 'law' bottoms out) VLSI is done in anythin other than Si.
Equipment relationship (Score:1, Funny)
50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:5, Informative)
This seems to be a stretch of the imagination. Moore's law defines, specifically "the number of components per integrated function" doubles every 12-24 months (is historically slightly more than 24 months), but is also (perhaps improperly) used to say that performance of processors doubles in that time.
In any case, following the progression of Moore's law from 1965 to today and through for the next 50 years reveals a minor (perhaps major) flaw in this scientist's assertion.
1971: 2,250 - Intel 4004
1982: 120,000 - Intel 80286
1993: 3.1 million - Intel Pentium
2003: 55 million - Intel P4 Northwood
2013: 1.76 billion
2023: 56 billion
2033: 1.8 trillion
2043: 57.6 trillion
2053: 1,840 trillion
The atomic diameter of an average old atom of some metallic element that would be used in transistor fabrication is about 10^-10 meters. The atoms in their molecular "crossbar" technology would be much larger, plus inter-atom spacing of about 0.3nm... we can assume there would be an element every 1nm.
With 1.84 quadrillion elements per component, we're talking 42 million components on a side, assuming uniform density and perfect 100% usage of space on the atomic level, these chips are just about half a meter in size.
Ok, so I proved myself wrong! Moores law has the TECHNICAL possibilty of holding true for the next 48 years. Beyond which, atomic structures themselves make the process of shrinking the components all but impossible.
Stewed Squirrel
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:2)
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:1)
Holy thermal meltdown Batman!
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:2)
With changes in techniques, and how one does it, many things are possible
For one example, just look at the changes in building manufacturing. At one time they couldn't get something super big, because of stone's limitations, then because of iron's, and now we make buildings exponentially larger with improved steel, created with new techniques.
It's all in
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:1)
It wasn't until I had already done the math that I realized I had already proved myself wrong.
But, remember that light only travels at.... the speed of light. And the current crop of chips using copper interconnects propigate
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:2)
Moore's Law says nothing about operating frequency. As pointed out already [slashdot.org], Moore's law refers to the total number of components (switches) that can be fit on a die.
Checking a layout I'm working on now (0.13um all-Cu process with 0.28um wire pitch), I see that I have a 4mm wire with
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:1)
Squirrely
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:1)
Been too long since I did any transistor level work.
Stewey
Re:50 years is a stretch for Moore's Law (Score:1)
I did some reading and found that Gordon Moore himself updated his "law" in 1971, revising the doubling time from 12 months (in his original 1965 observation) to 24 months (which, averaged, gives the oft-wrongly-cited 18 months) and he also commented that it seemed to include "performance" as a relative figure.
My mention of Clock speed in terms of that is simply a loose coorilation between frequency and performance.
Stewey
Is hardware the most efficient R&D investment? (Score:4, Insightful)
The catch is, it's a lot easier to make money selling silicon (or diamond, or DNA, or nanotubes, or whatever...)
Re:Is hardware the most efficient R&D investme (Score:2)
I've only got another 60 or 70 years before I need to transfer my conciousness to a computer you know.
The reason is wafer defects. (Score:4, Interesting)
This goes to the heart of Moore's Law. Moore's Law isn't about transistor size per se. Rather, it's about the number of components that can be built on an integrated circuit at minimum cost.
In his original paper [intel.com], Moore examines the effects the defect density (the number of defects in the silicon per unit area) and the size of the chip have on the economics of chip production. As you make larger and larger chips, you can put more and more transistors on them. However, the wafers have unavoidable defects in them; a physically larger chip is therefore more likely to contain one or more of the fatal defects, and be worthless.
Moore's key insight (and one that is usually overlooked) was that at any given level of technology (i.e., lithography or transistor size) there is an economically optimum number of components (almost exclusively transistors, today) per chip--that is, a number of components that minimizes the manufacturing cost per component (see the first figure of his paper). If the chip is too small, you spend too much time handling and packaging too many chips, driving up costs; if the chip is too big, the yield is low due to the wafer defects, and costs are driven up again. Crucially, Moore noted that this economically optimum number of transistors increases markedly over time, as integration technology improves; this led to his more famous second figure, showing the base 2 log of the number of components per integrated function growing without bound over time (and doubling every year, a slope that has since been reduced to doubling every 18-24 months). What is unstated in the figure itself is that this represents the economically optimum number of components per integrated fuction.
So the short answer to your question is that a chip 3 inches on a side could be made, but the yield would be so low, due to the unavoidable defects in the silicon wafer itself, that it would be fabulously expensive. It would be cheaper to make several smaller chips perform the same function, which is what is done today, if you stop to think of how many different chips are in the average PC.
Moore's paper is a marvel of prognostication; he notes in it, among many other keen insights:
He soon got his "flexible techniques for the engineering of large functions" by the invention of the microprocessor; the use of automated design techniques for digital circuits is, of course, now commonplace.moore's law nay sayerz (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't impossible. Theoretically when you get down to quantum computers where your using atomic mater itself your almost at the smallest possible size for computation, until you break down the individual peices of the positrons and electrons into quarks and gluons which could possibly be used for calculation, then you think about creating an artificial black hole and stuffing ever more matter into a singularity and you could calculate the universe from something the size of the head of a pin (especially if you adhere to the multiverse theory, which states there are infinite realities). If there are infinite realities, we could litterally collapse our own reality, and possibly others nearby into a singularity for calculation, and just keep on going and going and going.
Truly as we begin to see the emergence of quantum computers we start to head towards these paths for higher and higher calculations, instead of knowing a universe around us, abit at a time. We could know it all at once, in all it's enormousness. We could then know and create others (computation being equivilant according to babbage, a computer simulating a reality perfectly is in fact a new reality as our reality is nothing but mathematical laws anyhow).
While I know moore's law can fail us at any time now being a theory and not a fact. Dismissing it as most do so casually after it has perservered time and time again for so many decades running is really getting to be rather ridiculous.
death of moore's law in perspective (Score:2)
Moore's Law is a rule of thumb for transistor size. Our current computational technologies are based on a transistor-like gate. We get into a new computing paradigm.
Transistor based machines (and even tube based computers, yes, the old dinosaurs) can be modeled by a
Re:death of moore's law in perspective (Score:1)
Re:moore's law nay sayerz (Score:2)
Wait--I'm confused. You're going to perform computations inside of a singularity (black hole). Okay. How are you going to get your result back out again?
Re:moore's law nay sayerz (Score:1)
Negativity.. (Score:1)
Wait, it's funded by DARPA?
Oh well, anything that keeps them from putting energy into causing panic [darpa.mil] and classifying me as a terrorist [darpa.mil] can't be all bad, I guess.
Streching moore's law is nice but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Therefor, we have three options I see.
First - we opt to double die size, and hence see an appropriate improvement with minimal heat issues. Although lag between outer sectors of the processor is an issue. (This same solution could be applied to building 3D chipsets, but heat would be an issue.)
Second - we use optical based chipsets, this has the advantage of letting us minimise a lot more, however the technology hasnt been perfected, and it is VASTLY different to what we are currently using, and could suffer from external interference caused by heat (contracting/expanding glass/plastic tubules will form a primitive lens).
Third - we opt for more efficient systems, Hyperthreading is a good example of this, allowing a processor to use sections that are otherwise unused to do several operations at once. However, this requires a change in programming practices to allow for the change to multithreaded applications as standard, something which most programmers are not willing to engage nor understand.
Of course there are more solutions, however I still see we are going to be very limited with copper, silicon or germanium[sp?] circuits in the next decade.
-Gwala
Re:Streching moore's law is nice but ... (Score:2)
1. Double die size? Heat's not the problem (bigger die surface area makes it easier to dissipate heat, not harder, assuming same transistor density and switching rate). Manufacturability (and thus price) is the problem. Currently, the largest silicon die anyone can make at a price anyone will pay is just under 20mm on edge (400mm^2). Yield for such dice is around 20-30% (so, 70-
Re:Streching moore's law is nice but ... (Score:1)
This kind of thinking is deeply (but poorly) rooted in the details of Moore's Law. Moore made an observation about specific manufacturing processes of the kind mentioned here. (Except Moore had a better understanding of the technical details - for example "doubling die size" would quadr
I'm miles ahead of these guys (Score:4, Funny)
My computer is chock full of molecules already and it's quite dependent on them for it's functionality.
Re:I'm miles ahead of these guys (Score:1)
Actually, I'd rather like a PC that works without relying on molecules.
They've considered photons, DNA and the third dimension - why not consider metaphysic?
The new ZX Specter: Now with UDRAM (UnDead RAM; the data doesn't die when you turn off the power), Real Voodoo video card (speed dependent on the amount of chickens sacrificed on the GPU) and the processing power of a 2.5 GigaSoul FPGhA (Field Programmable Ghost Array). Available at your local Pagan store for the price of... your soul, of course.
Re:I'm miles ahead of these guys (Score:1)
Why is HP bothering? (Score:2)
Marketing and market share matters. An Intel chip with 20% improvement is likely to sell much better than an HP chip that doubles performance.
Re:Why is HP bothering? (Score:2)
Hey, wait a second... (Score:1)