Intel To Make A Greener Microprocessor 229
crem_d_genes writes "According to the San Jose Mercury News, Intel is planning microprocessors that have a reduced amount of lead in them (reportedly 95% lower). It's about time a company started this - good job - and let's hope other tech companies take the hint. While many places in the US have banned the disposal of computer parts, there have been unintended consequences of the eco-friendly laws. Many 'recycled' computers currently get shipped overseas where parts eventually make their ways into the hands of workers who usually 'burn' the parts to get rid of plastic and recover small amounts of valuable metals. In the process they are exposed to the toxic compounds that are released. In other cases, lead makes its way into drinking water."
question (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Greener Chips? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:question (Score:5, Interesting)
Bravo! (Score:1, Interesting)
Thumbs up, Intel!
Lesser power consumption, better optimizing compilers, new technology in place of the older x86 and creating more jobs are still in your list... don't forget it!
I myself have doubts they are doing this only because of environmental reasons..., but nevertheless it is a step in the right direction.
Lead is the least of our worries (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, but wait, atleast now there'll be a quarter gram less lead in my computer.
Most people have all the computing power they need. It's time more people worry less about clock speed and more about their electric bills and what happens to all those chemicals after Intel's done with them. Cheers.
It's just PR (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not denying that the lead reduction is real. It is real.
But this isn't anything unique to Intel, and it isn't done out of the goodness of their green little hearts.
Every IC manufacturer, in fact practically every manufacturer of anything electronic, is already investigating lead reduction or elimination at some level or other. Not all are making a public hoopla about it, though.
Lead free solder requires the development of new alloys and new processes. The changeover isn't trivial, but some promissing candidates exist. Typically they have very high tin content, plus some mix of Silver, Copper, and Antimony.
There are several reasons for this trend: Regulatory changes (pending in the US, and I think already passed in Europe?), Liability/Insurance cost (employee lawsuits), and waste treatment cost, including waste water.
My opinion: I don't beleive lead in electronics will ever be totally eliminated, nor outright outlawed. I'm no solder/process expert, but those I know tell me that leadless soldering presents many challenges. More likely in my opinion, regulations will take the form of taxes and fees on lead content, driving manufacturers to use it only where no good alternative exists.
Eutectic alloys vs pure tin (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the lead in the soldering alloy is significant, too: the so-called "eutectic" alloy contains 37 to 40 % lead and the rest is tin (Sn).
Eutectic alloys have a lower melting point than any of it's components. That's exactly the reason why lead is added to tin, in soldering alloys.
Another very efficient dopant is silver - it decreases considerably the melting point. Unfortunately, it's expensive.
Tin is basicly innocuous, while lead is toxic. The problem with lead is that it causes a chronic poisoning called saturnism, where your brain suffers considerable damage - in fact, largely unrecoverable.
I should add here that there are historians that think one reason for the fall of the roman empire lies in the use of lead cups for drinking wine. These lead cups were quite popular in the roman army, and it's not inconceivable that this might have decreased the soldier's mental and physical abilities.
The problem with the lead-free soldering technologies is exactly the higher melting temperature of pure tin compared to the eutectic alloys. Reflow and other technologies have to be fine-tuned for higher temperatures, and the risk of damaging some of the components is significantly higher. I, for one, prefere much more to use normal, eutectic alloy for my hobby work.
Problems with gold (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with the pure gold was it was contaminated with about 0.9% of mix of platinum and iridium so it was much harder then normal soft pure gold. It was not usable for local dentist nor for making jewellery.
We did not find any usable process how to separate platinum and/or iridium from the gold, so the only practical purpose of the pure gold was.. a magic stick.
Re:Green friendly? (Score:5, Interesting)
To clarify (and make sure I'm understanding correctly), Intel's "more MHz/GHz is better" marketing approach is presenting a problem to even themselves, much like it did for AMD a couple of years ago. Now that Intel is making more effecient (work done per-clock) processors, like AMD has been doing, simply comparing MHz among even just Intel processors is no longer a good performance measure, and might even make their new line appear slower (again, when comparing only clock-speed numbers).
It sounds like they're taking a step back from the P4 design, which were slower clock for clock than even their older (PIII) processors, but capable of higher clock speeds; so at the time the MHz myth worked to their advantage, where now it is no longer to their advantage.
That, and the market (in my opinion) isn't as speed-hungry as it was just a year ago. A quieter, smaller, more energy-efficient PC design is more likely to make the average user upgrade than a faster, beefier PC. Computers are "fast enough" for most people's needs (most of the time even for myself, a programmer and FPS game player).
It's happeneing elsewhere too (Score:5, Interesting)
-David
Re:question (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple got it right by using Benchmarks to sell their product, even if the benchmarks are strange and deceptive. Hey, lying, cheating, and stealing are what got Microsoft to the top, everyone's gotta play a little dirty.
And yes, buying a PC should be an emotional experience, as well as a scientific one. PC's, like Cars, are where us humans now spend a great deal of our lives. (nerds/geeks especially). We need to have some level of attachment to the machine we're using just so that it doesn't drive us mad.
Re:How much lead is present in a microprocessor? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Reduced lead? (Score:2, Interesting)
Semicondoctor fabs have a truly collosal ecological footprint, good thing what they make is worth more than gold. They consume tremendous amounts of water, and energy, to say nothing of the photoresists, acid baths and slag from the parts of the ores that aren't used. There are no doubt a log of computers, but you want to make an impact invent a lightbulb that costs the same or less, can be adapted to all the same fixtures, lasts longer, uses half as much energy, and get everyone to use it.
Re:question (Score:4, Interesting)
great move (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:question (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at a typical HP or Dell (or even e-Machines) people buy these days. My cousin's HP Pavilion has a DVD+/-R, CD-RW, 80 GB disk, fast P4 etc -- yet is a very quiet and small machine. There's a shroud over the CPU leading to a case fan (there is also a separate CPU and PSU fan; some Gateways from a couple years ago *replaced* the CPU and/or PSU fans with such a shroud setup).
Yet it's very quiet, and I believe the fans are even running at a lower voltage than normal (they kick fast at first on power-up, and quickly slow down to a very quiet speed).
Why? Because these days, in my opinion, people are more apt to upgrade to get a smaller, quieter, more efficient PC than a faster one. Their current PC probably does all they need as far as speed/RAM/disk space is concerned. And unless you're playing the latest and greatest 3D games, video performance makes little difference from low to high end these days (my geForce was top of the line in its day; now you can't even buy a slower/crappier card. Yet it's sufficient).
I think the market is driving the industry in that general direction -- quieter, smaller and more efficient PCs, that are plenty fast (rather than "fastest available").
I would personally love to see the Pentium M processors start to appear in desktops, which is something I hadn't considered before. Or even just more efficient desktop processors in general. But I do believe the industry is moving in that direction, and we'll be seeing quieter and more energy efficient machines in the next few years (notice that even today, flat-panel monitors are becoming standard even on low-end machines).
Just wait - I believe that within a couple of years, ads for Dell, etc, will be pushing things like noise level, energy efficiency, and small form-factor, touting GHz/MB/GB a bit less...
Is lead worse than other heavy metals? (Score:2, Interesting)
The other popular alternative to silicon is Gallium Arsenide. Gosh, arsenic, another heavy metal with a place in the history of poisonings.
Lead, mercury, and arsenic are famous just because they're common on the earth and have been known since ancient times. All heavy metals accumulate int he body and cause problems, and I'm not sure that exotic ones are necessarily better.
I've never been sure that lead isn't being replaced with other metals equally bad. Maybe it is, but I've never seen an explanation of lead-free electronics that explains why the replacements are better, just that they don't contain the demon lead.