3-D Flexible Computer Chips 85
Roland Piquepaille writes "Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have isolated a single-crystal film of semiconductor from the substrate on which it is built. Then they transferred this very thin film — 200 nanometers thick — on plastic. Both sides of the film can host active components and several layers can be stacked, opening the way to very powerful 3-D flexible computer chips. Besides computer chips, this technique could be used for solar cells, smart cards, RFID tags or active-matrix flat panel displays."
The Future is now (Score:1, Insightful)
Great show, man. Shatner was amazing
Excellent application for cpu construction. (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be a revolution in cooling efficiency.
Could be used... (Score:4, Insightful)
And thus... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hopefully these tricks, and others, will be commercially available by the time it becomes impractical to cram any more cores on a single chip.
Re:Could be used... (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably the CPU in larger devices like my washing machine is properly placed and can use the entire body of the machine to cool it, but in general electric circuits of any kind will produce heat under load.
Saying it just PC cpu's is idiotic. All cpu's will get warm, just because some you use are small enough and cooled well enough that you don't notice it doesn't mean they won't overheat if you remove the cooling.
Sympathy [ok, off topic, sorry] (Score:3, Insightful)
Being serious, your argument is flawed. This might not in fact be a good way to make better solar cells. You can invest as much as you like in technology, but if you try to push too far in one direction too fast you will fail to get synergies. Putting a man on the moon has actually achieved very little for space flight overall. Heavy expenditure on military programs leads to waste and inefficiency, and ends up with paradoxes like commercial semiconductor designs being more reliable than extensively tested military ones.
It actually takes a long time to train PhDs who can build on the work of the previous generation, and the number of people with the capability of doing leading edge work is limited. Before you can spend $300 billion on R&D you have to get a big enough educated population, and that means rapid social development under less than ideal conditions. Don't misunderstand me, I believe we need large investments to mitigate global warming - but the answer may not be solar power, or hydrogen, and it would be foolish to bet the planet on any one technology.