Scientists Demonstrate Ultra-Fast Magnetite Electrical Switch 37
adeelarshad82 writes "Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory recently demonstrated electrical switching thousands of times faster than in transistors now in use thanks to a naturally magnetic mineral called magnetite (abstract). The experiment is considered a major step forward in understanding electrical structures at the atomic level and working with recently identified electrical 'building blocks' called trimerons. The breakthrough could lead to innovations in the tiny transistors that control the flow of electricity across silicon chips, enabling faster, more powerful computing devices."
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Yes, it's a dupe, but at least this one has a link to an article that explains something about it.
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But it was duped ultra-fast keeping in the spirit of the story.
Heard this one before (Score:1)
Is this actually relevant for end-user electronics? Or is it yet another of those wonderful promising potential fast-switching techs that are announced every few months(since 1980 or so) yet never pan out to anything practical.
Re:Heard this one before (Score:4)
No, but it is relevant for nerds.
As for whether or not new technologies ever pan out... perhaps you should compare whatever computer it is you're using now against the one you were using in 1980.
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I'm talking about the non-silicon THz frequency transistors that are promised every now and then, obviously the normal iterative approach is a valid approach for improvments, but it doens't lead to breakthrough paradigm shifts.
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You can't make a tiny transistor when they have to use a laser to turn on/off the device. I'll bet the laser is a lot bigger than the feature sizes of transistors these days. i.e. not going to have as complex circuits as we have today.
So how long to charge that laser, what type of delay you to laser fires and are you using a slower technology to switch the laser on/off?
You can improve the rise/fall time of the transistor, great, but if you have a lot of latency from the control signal to the laser to circu
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Does it count as prior art if the prior art is biogenic? If so... meh, this is old news!
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Magnetite is already commonly used in magnetic storage such as hard disks.
Now that SSDs are replacing hard disks the magnetite suppliers are looking for new customers.
Want to bet they are going to fund the shit out of research into using it as transistors in household electronics?
Re:Heard this one before (Score:5, Informative)
Is this actually relevant for end-user electronics? Or is it yet another of those wonderful promising potential fast-switching techs that are announced every few months(since 1980 or so) yet never pan out to anything practical.
It it's current form, no, at least not for desktops. It might be useful for supercomputers. Real supercomputers that is, not the supercomputers currently in vogue made of hundreds of pallet loads of commodity type PCs linked by networks. The requirement for cryocooling (-190 C.) pretty much rules it out otherwise.
Hopefully it will serve as a good starting point for further research that could lead to breakthroughs that allow it to work at higher temperatures.
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this is normal for scientific R&D for possible future products, most things don't pan out. those very few things that get invested in don't pan out. most start up businesses don't pan out. One of my past jobs was manager of engineering group at profitable company, and even then most things done in R&D there don't pan out.
so don't complain, it's normal and always has been
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Is this actually relevant for end-user electronics? Or is it yet another of those wonderful promising potential fast-switching techs that are announced every few months(since 1980 or so) yet never pan out to anything practical.
You'd be surprised of how many of those things that already have found their way into your home but still pop up on slashdot because someone finds out some new production method to make them more viable in other application.
Take for example this article about GaAs semiconductors from 2001 [slashdot.org]
You also have retarded comments like "Ah, Gallium Arsenide chips, thw chip of the future. Always have been, always will be, the chip of the future." from Blaede, a comment that reminds me of yours.
Yet today I'm pretty sure
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Thank you, AC, for posting this interesting old
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Yeah, stop wasting money on research. This stuff never pans out, so lets stop trying.
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shorter, better abstract. (Score:2)
Every time I read news like this... (Score:1)
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Because raytracing does produce near-reality quality. It solves the shadow/lighting problem - you simply treat diffuse light sources as a very large number of point light sources. All those wonderfully-perfect CGI films and special effects are produced using raytracing... at an hour a frame.
The only problem with raytracing is the extreme processing requirements. It's paralleliseable to a point, until you start having issues with memory bandwidth.
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s/intellect/knowledge/
FTFY.
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You can probably take it as a rule of thumb that it will take 5-10 years for a basic scientific development like this, involving the materials, to move from the lab to production quality chips. That is assuming that it ever makes it. Variations in the count of things (going from 2 processors to 4) generally aren't that difficult on the hardware side, but getting full effect from the software may take some time. The more "exotic" the technology is, the greater the risk that it will take longer, or not hap
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