Super-fast Transistors On the Way 172
nbannerman writes "The BBC is reporting about a new kind of transistor, that recently set a world record of 110Ghz. From the article: 'To achieve the speed gain, researchers at the University of Southampton added fluorine to the silicon devices. The technique uses existing silicon manufacturing technology meaning it should be quick and easy to deploy.' The apparent applications for this process include mobile phones and digital cameras."
Faster? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Faster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Faster? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, because if the cpu is fast enough, even unstable code works better!
Re:Faster? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Where does that expression come from, anyway? (Score:2)
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often the sides are labeled Time, Cost and Quality, but the idea is still the same. I've even seen builders put the diagram in tender submissions.
Some management guru has even gone on to say that for any given project the area of the triangle is always the same. so that the most effective project will be an equal angle triangle.
The management guy was from the 70's so the idea has to be at least a 100years older
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Pick two
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BS dude (Score:2)
Maybe software engineers should do some basic hardware engineering to learn the processes of making good stuff tm
So use stable/schedule software guys to write 90% of your software, and use a few smarty pants guys to write
the core speed deamon code for the specifics that require it.
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But why is the hardware CPU chip itself STABLE, and FAST, and released on SCHEDULE?
At one place I worked, one of the hardware engineering rooms had a poster on the wall which read: "Software will be as stable and as bug-free as hardware the day it costs a software engineer five million dollars and three months to run his compiler".
That probably goes some way towards answering your question.
That's right (Score:3, Funny)
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Comes down to numbers.
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Engineer: There is no hardware issue that cannot be solved through the use of well-written software.
Discuss.
Meanwhile, they have this notion that an improvement in transistor speed is an advance specifically for mobile peripherals. What about shattering moore's law? Have these guys not considered that, you know, maybe, your computer's circuitry is made up almost entirely out of transistors and capacitors?
Honestly,
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Just one look at the design shows it's not 'bouncing'. It's passing through the dielectric portion of a capacitor. The pyramid isn't even present in the SEM view of the device.
Which is not to say it's not a good idea for memory; you end up having a transistor and capacitor coupled in such a way as to make for a single self-maintaining bit.
Meanwhile, it doesn't look that revolutionary. Th
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so yeah, I am a little confused on this point...
Understanding is a Three-Edged Sword (Score:2)
Engineer: There is no hardware issue that cannot be solved through the use of well-written software.
Discuss.
It's not plugged in?
Adequate beats excellent (Score:2)
I am not just talking about Microsoft. If I studied the history more closely, there might be an underlying principle like "first to market" that would explain this apparent stupidity. On the money making side,
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That takes more time and more talent to write. It'd be a pain in the butt if mobile phone or digital camera processors were so slow everything had to be super optimized just to be useful. Heck, I remember using one of the first digital cameras. Relatively speaking, it took forever just for it to capture, encode, and save the image to memory. Nowadays you can get cameras that take the pictures super fast. I say we should have faster processing AND better softwar
Mobile Phones? (Score:3, Funny)
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Mobile Phones?-PADs (Score:2, Funny)
So the future will get here faster.
Mod the parent upwards! (Score:3, Funny)
Precisely! We agree completely.
Signed,
SACFTF
Slashdot Anonymous Cowards For The Future
-----EQUAL REPRESENTATION-----
Listen you "big A-C" Anonymous Cowards, we're against the future. Technology ruined our lives, remember when trolls used to live under bridges? Now we live in basements or apartments. We should go backwards, not forwards!
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Slashdot Anonymous Cowards Against The Future.
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Re:Mobile Phones? (Score:5, Informative)
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WiFi sits in the ISM band at 2.7GHz
Cellular service is in assorted bands all over 500MHz and under 3GHz
Collision avoidance radar (now going into fancy new cars) is up around 40-60 GHz (not sure on the exact number, haven't designed one yet)
Any and all of that can be done with 0.18um CMOS, (excepth the radar) nothing fancier required.
For RF front end there are a lot of secialty transistors, SiGe, GaAs. IndP and others.
Re:Mobile Phones? (Score:5, Informative)
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Cellphones use the frequencies they use not because it's the best that technology can
Power Consumption (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Power Consumption (Score:5, Informative)
You are talking about basic c*v**2 current, and he's talking about shoot-through current during the transition. Though one normally doesn't fuss too hard about shoot-through unless slew rates are really slow. But then again, it wasn't that many years ago that device standby leakage was nearly negligible, instead of being a substantial fraction of the active current, like it is today. For that matter, the scope traces I've seen of high-speed clocks look a heck of a lot more like a sine wave than a logic pulse, but at this point we're stressing capabilities of the measurment electonics, too.
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Re:Power Consumption (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA
This isn't about CMOS, for a change. This is about analog power amplification and the 100GHz figure quoted is either the maximum frequency of current or power amplification. Too bad the BBC doesn't say.
Most cell phones contain one Gallium Arsenide bipolar transistor to amplify the signal going to the antenna. This faster Silicon transistor would open up other transmission frequencies but it wouldn't make that game of Alchemy play any faster.
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GaAs is a FET, not a bipolar, although there are some GaAS bipolars as well.
Also the RF PA in a cell phone is generally GaAs although there are some exception. Never been a single transistor ever to my knowledge, the classic architecture is a three stage device.
Re:Power Consumption (Score:4, Informative)
The reason that the development is significant is not from a microprocessor standpoint - it means that the front end amplifiers and mixers that have to run at the highest frequencies can be fabricated using more cost-effective manufacturing techniques. This is assuming that the article is correct in stating the development concerns BJT's. Hell knows why they showed a photo of a non-populated circuit board, but hey, it's the media. Guess you have dial your expectations lower.
But these are BIPOLAR transistors! (Score:3, Insightful)
Paul B.
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Paul B.
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Not CMOS, it is a different world.
As for switching speed being faster, well, yes, but at 90nm and down gate dielectric leakage plays into it in a big big ugly way...
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Re:Mobile Phones? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like my LCD-based phones from 10 years ago used to.
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(Or rather, it won't as this isn't the CPU we're talking about. You've just tripped my latest semantics-nazi pet-hate. Sorry.)
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Not for processors (Score:1)
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Re:Mobile Phones? (Score:4, Funny)
On second thought, post all kinds of misinformation like this, then Microsoft will spec themselves out of business.
Re:Mobile Phones? (Score:5, Informative)
"The research was carried out using a simple type of transistor known as a silicon bipolar transistor."
Processors use FET transistors because BJT transistors need current to bias them all the time. These transistors would consume way too much power to make any sort of processor (especially for mobile devices). As others have commented, this would only be useful for the analog processing of the output transmitter.
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Minor detail with respect to "Mr Nyquist" - If you want to do as you describe, you need an ADC that runs at (lets say RF at 2GHz to make the numbers easy) 4GHz sampling rate.
Ok, well that is do-able, although it takes ***amps*** of current and you need to really know what you are doing to get it to work.
Now a minor detail - due to the dynamic amplitude range of the signal, (on the ord
Re:Mobile Phones? (Score:4, Funny)
It's baboon not babboon, you buffoon.
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Tom
As an added benefit... (Score:5, Funny)
Not only will the transistors be faster, but whiter and shinier, they won't need to floss.
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Apparently transistors aren't made of teeth. Go figure.
KFG
Nonono (Score:2)
Call General Jack D. Ripper on this one... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, for those who have never seen it, the silly reference [wikipedia.org] is from Dr. Strangeglove [imdb.com].
Re:As an added benefit... (Score:5, Informative)
Fluorine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorine [wikipedia.org]
Fluoride: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride [wikipedia.org]
There would be some pretty serious differences betweent the two. Neither is good for you to ingest, but one is just REALLY BAD to get anywhere near you at all!
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they feed those only ... (Score:2)
But use of such mobile phones and cameras... (Score:5, Funny)
Real-world benefits? (Score:4, Funny)
These are bipolar devices (Score:2)
Re:These are bipolar devices (Score:5, Funny)
bipolar transistors (Score:1)
Re:bipolar transistors (Score:5, Informative)
There is also a very good chance that while the manufacturing process may be suitable for single (relatively) large tranistors (perfectly suitable, and often desireable for RF), it is not suitable for integrated circuits with multiple tranistors and other components on a die. Gallium Arsenide is a perfect example of this - The IC industry gave up on it pretty quickly because it was simply too difficult to make integrated circuits with it and the performance benefits for logic circuits weren't worth the costs, but manufacturers of RF transistors are still putting large amounts of effort into GaAs and plenty of commercial products exist. (Yes, there are still issues with GaAs technology and a lot of companies still don't trust GaAs in their products except in low-volume high-performance applications, but it's not like logic circuits where nothing exists on the market.)
Same thing with IBM's big SiGe push - great for RF but doesn't seem to have made any inroads to logic, probably due to cost issues and technical problems that make SiGe potentially unsuitable for logic but don't really affect their RF performance.
Re:bipolar transistors (Score:5, Informative)
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Excellent commentary - a couple of addendums -
GaAs has all kinds of problems with defect density yield loss, this is another reason it is friendly to the RF PA (under 20 transistors) and not for the next Pentium-27 (2 zillion transistors)
SiGe (from IBM & Jazz anyhow) is sold as BiCMOS, CMOS and SiGe Bipolars on the same chip. However BiCMOS tends to be a few generations in size behind CMOS.
SiGe (and Strained Silicon, but thats another story) does get used in specialized locations inside of big-i
Apparent applications? (Score:2)
Tell me, what digital device would not benefit from shorter switching times?
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You'll be dead before your finger can push the button.
Floride in children's ice cream? (Score:2, Funny)
MOSFET Application (Score:5, Informative)
Re:MOSFET Application (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MOSFET Application (Score:5, Informative)
Re:MOSFET Application (Score:5, Informative)
One of the physical features of a MOSFET is that there are places where silicon dopped to be of the type P (ie, a substance was added to it so that it is missing electrons in it's crystaline structure by comparisson with pure silicon) is in direct contact with silicon dopped to be of type N (ie, a substance was added to it so that it has extra electrons in it's crystaline structure by comparisson with pure silicon).
Now, as many of us know, solids are just very slow liquids
In the specific case of a MOSFET, we have junctions between the silicon dopped with a specific material to make it type-N (ie more electrons) and silicon dopped with a different material to make it type-P (ie fewer electrons). In this situation, some of the dopping atoms in the type-N silicon will move to the type-P side and vice versa, thus making the junction less "sharp" (in terms of the difference between both sides).
Some very complicated formulas (which i forgot all about) can be used to show that the "sharper" the junction, the more efficient it is.
This is what the GGP is going about.
Consider that maybe there are enough people in
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Not really the fastest transistor... (Score:5, Informative)
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The performance of a 0.25×3 m2 pseudomorphic heteojunction bipolar transistors achieves peak fT of 710 GHz (fMAX=340 GHz)... (emphasis mine)
So, maximum achievable frequency is actually quite a bit lower than 710GHz.
Also, the article acknowledges that faster transistors exist ("Alternative approaches for building fast transistors exist but they use other materials, such as gallium arsenide or a silicon germanium mix, which require more expensive manufacturing techniques."), but thi
Purpose? (Score:2, Interesting)
OMG that would be hard to use. (Score:3, Interesting)
The magic word Slashdot asks me to type to prove that I'm not a robot is 'hospital'. How very appropriate 'cause that's where I would end up if I tried to use this sucker.
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More like 3mm when we get down to it.
Basically you have to use balanced transmission lines such as LVDS and start learning how to define trace impedance for PCB. Oh and stop putting unrelated power/GND planes on same sections of the PCB..
Easy? No. Feasible? Oh definitely.
W Band (Score:2)
Apparently this freq is known as W-band microwave radiation. Useful for millimetre wave radar apparently - you know the machine that can see through clothes at the airport? Wonder if this is why they are researching it? Anyone know better than me? Will my kids have real X-ray specs?
Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads... (Score:2, Informative)
I don't design digital circuits with bipolar devices. I design digital circuits with CMOS devices. Bipolar sucks power but it runs fast. CMOS sips power but it run's slower.
And if I'm going to design anything usefull with it, that thing is going to operate at about 1/10th of the cut-off frequency (Ft).
This ain't about 110 GHz CPUs.
This is about Op Amps and Phase Lock Loops.
I know that Circuits 101 was a long ti
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Oh, and BTW, if you think you are doing op-amps at these frequencies, then please go sit in the corner for a 10 minute time-out...
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
...who reads something like this, and hearkens back to the days when people thought stuff like this would lead to some sort of golden age, and then to hear that it will simply make "better phones and cameras" is kind of disappointing. I know the prior attitude was a lot of idealistic pie-in-the-sky, flying-car, jet-pack, white building, monorail nonsense. Still though. I miss it. Oh... bring back Donald Duck with his doors to the future, and the nuclear powered airplane. Please? For just a moment?
What About IBM+Georgia Tech @ 500ghz? (Score:4, Informative)
Hos is this new one a world record at 110ghz?
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The *real* article is here. fT = 110GHz (Score:2, Informative)
Summary:
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12112/ [soton.ac.uk]
pdf:
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12112/01/2006_Kham
Guess what else (Score:2)
1. Faster Cash Registers (Wal-mart, are you listening???)
2. Faster ATM's (though I admit it's usually the dufus in front of me & not the machine that's the problem)
3. Faster calculators (for all you toe counters out there)
4. Faster gas pumps (so we can fund the terrorists we're fighting more effectively)
5. Faster Coffee makers (I don't know if making the programmable stuff faster will actually make the brew faster, but one can only hope)
2 ce
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Re:Oh, In addition to arsenic, we will have haloge (Score:2)