The Birth of Semiconductor 2.0

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to several articles in the press, an Austrian company has opened a new chip printing factory. But there is a twist. The chips produced by this factory, dubbed Semiconductor 2.0 by the company, will be organic semiconductors, and will be produced by inkjet printers. According to the company, the new factory will be able to produce 40,000 square meters of semiconductors per year, mainly for the biotech, clean tech, and defense industries."

Re:Of course, the REAL money . . .

[veganboyjosh]

not only developing world. i was thinking more along the lines of cheap-o electronics inside cereal boxes, happy meals, etc...a lot of overlap, tho, i'm guessing there is.

Re:Of course, the REAL money . . .

[Intron]

And what would cheap electronics printed right onto packaging do?

*** ADVERTISING ***

This may be an advance, but I'm sensing a mixed blessing.

Re:Leapfrogging the developing world

[PopeRatzo]

Why is it that westerners think that the developing world has to start way back in the 1960

Have you ever been to a "developing" nation? Many of them are "starting" way before "1963". The technological revolution in Europe and the West came after most of the residents of those regions were reasonably well-fed, healthy, had some plumbing, indoor refrigeration for food, etc. That is not the case in much of the "developing" world. I was in Tanzania a few years ago, and traveled through some of the countries along the Western coast of Southern Africa a few years before that. I've been to Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and have seen much of Central America. They wish they had 1963 technology in many of those places.

It's not about the level of technology, it's about how widespread it is among the population. Believe me when I tell you that just because the friends of the Prime Minister all have Mercedes, iPods, satellite phones and Playstations does not mean that their country has technology.

And just because the gluttonous creeps who run global corporations decide to set up factories or call centers or even code farms CERTAINLY doesn't mean that those countries have any technology. It just means that there's someone so despicable that they'd suck what little wealth is in those countries for themselves and their shareholders while taking advantage of the fact that the life expectancy is 49 so they won't have to worry about paying retirement benefits.

I wish I could write vividly enough to express how disgusting the exploitation of the "developing world" by global corporations is and how badly it's misusing the people in those places. And remember, once they can drive down the middle class here in the US so that Americans will accept those wages, they'll deign to come back here, but only after we promise never to utter the word "union" or "collective bargaining" again.

Strangely, what computers are in those countries mostly seem to be running Windows. Hmmm.

The equivalent of one silicon wafer a year? Wow!

[nick_davison]

According to the company, the new factory will be able to produce 40,000 square meters of semiconductors per year.

Given that the whole goal of semiconductors has been to make them smaller and smaller, boasting about how much area you can use up isn't necessarily a good thing.

It's worse when you consider this tech is roughly micrometers to silicon's nanometers. 10^3x10^3 means you're looking at a millionth the area utilization of silicon. Divide 40,000 by a million and you're looking at the equivalent of 0.04 square meters of silicon or roughly that of a single 12" wafer. A whole factory to produce the equivalent of one silicon wafer a year? Not such a great boast.

Yeah, I'm sure I've got meters squared and square meters confused, messed up an area calculation or somesuch... But you get the idea.

Funny that square. . .

[treeves]

meters are used as the measure of production, rather than #transistors or some other more meaningful measure. Hiding the fact that 1 sq cm only has 1000 transistors instead of 1,000,000?

Re:Roland Piquepaille again!

[bill_mcgonigle]

All of which can be found days earlier by having RSS feeds to ArsTechnica, The New Scientist, Computer World, The National Academies, and the AP Science and Technology wires. What's his value add again?

Um, you just proved your counterpoint - by us not having to read all the RSS feeds in existence. Cripes, I have 4762 unread items in NewsFire and I have none of those feeds you mentioned.