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Hardware

NTT Verifies Diamond Semiconductor Operation At 81 GHz 510

Posted by timothy from the ooh-shiny dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "This story over at eetimes.com reports of a semiconductor made of diamond that is able to run at 81 GHz." Mmmm, foreshadowing.
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NTT Verifies Diamond Semiconductor Operation At 81 GHz More

NTT Verifies Diamond Semiconductor Operation At 81 GHz

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  • Gamer Heaven...er Hell (Score:5, Funny)

    by Whitecloud ( 649593 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:51AM (#6791264) Homepage
    Should be able to run Doom III.... heh.

    • Re:Gamer Heaven...er Hell (Score:5, Funny)

      by Gherald ( 682277 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:55AM (#6791287) Journal
      Perhaps it will. But the article doesn't have any any Quake III Arena FPS benchmarks!

      What's up with that!?
    • Probably still need to over clock, with water-cooling, turning the details down a bit could help to.

    • Re:Gamer Heaven...er Hell (Score:4, Insightful)

      by randyest ( 589159 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:23AM (#6791460) Homepage
      The fine article is not clear on this, just saying that they made "a chip" (which can be a lot of things.) In any case, I'm sure this isn't a x86 chip. Most likely a RF device. 0.2um in 3mm^2 aint much, definitely not enough for an x86. Not even a 286.
      • Sure, they just say "FET device". Possibly just a single FET. Early days yet, it is a long way to get from a single transistor to a microprocessor. The more immediate applications for this are high power high frequency devices which currently still use vacuum tubes.
      • As someone who works in this frequency range, I'd like to point out a few things. First, there are many commercial applications in use up to 40 GHz or so. The center around communications, mostly. The military uses higher frequencies for radar and fuzing applications.

        Chips in these frequency ranges are analog - low noise amplifiers, mixers, and power amplifiers. Commercially available chips are available up to 100 GHz or more. These chips typically have no more than 20 or 30 transistors, if not much

  • Mmmmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by hdparm ( 575302 )
    ...should we start imagining Beowulf clusters of these?

    • Re:Ummmm... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sCreeD ( 34863 )
      Good luck getting more than two of those chips, let alone a cluster of them.

      Vacuum tubes still being used in production broadcasting... I did not know that...

      Screed

      • Re:Ummmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by luzrek ( 570886 )
        Actually, according to an article in a recent (this month?) Wired magazine, there is a corporation in Boston which is developing ultra-pure diamonds using a vapor disposition techinque. While the initial generations of diamonds produced in this way will be expensive, if they prove useful, mass production will ultimately drive the price of diamonds through the floor. Haha! take that DeBeers! (seriously, DeBeers's corporate executives cannot come to the US without being arrested, and they are single handly

        • Apollo Diamond (Score:4, Informative)

          by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @10:16AM (#6793345) Homepage Journal

          there is a corporation in Boston which is developing ultra-pure diamonds using a vapor disposition techinque

          You're thinking of Apollo Diamond [apollodiamond.com], which plans to use revenues from selling vapor deposition gemstones to fund research into diamond semiconductors. There's a nice writeup about synthetic diamonds [everything2.com] at E2.

          However, in many markets, synthetic diamonds sold as gemstones have to be labeled as synthetic, giving De Beers an out: "A diamond isn't forever if it was grown in a lab five days ago."

    • Re:Mmmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by randyest ( 589159 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:26AM (#6791475) Homepage
      Er, yeah, if you want a massive cellphone booster or something. This is definitely not a general purpose processor (CPU), 0.2um gates in 3mm^2 is insufficient density and area to make any kind of decent CPU (maybe an 8-bit PIC, which even a cluster of is weak by today's standards).

  • Geeks want to know... (Score:5, Funny)

    by serps ( 517783 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:53AM (#6791272) Homepage
    So, will these new chips be free as in speech, or free as in De Beers?
    • I forget where it was posted (Wired I think, I searched and couldn't find it), but there was a story posted about manufacturing 'fake' diamonds that have no defects and such, so the answer to your question is: Cheap as in Top Ramen. Also, if you have figured this out already - our 'speech' isn't really that 'free' anymore.
      • Edit: I should have read the 'article' on slashdot instead of just clicking the link. Sigh, I'm an idiot :( [wired.com]

      • Re:Geeks want to know... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dakryx ( 646923 ) <dakryx@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:06AM (#6791365)
        I remember a Nova special about manufactured diamonds and how GM finally got the large ones made with no defects. A trip from a Debeers exec and the operation was shutdown and people were released. Back to the industrial diamond business!

        • Re:Geeks want to know... (Score:5, Informative)

          by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @03:27AM (#6791845) Homepage Journal
          Negative; the GM operation was shut down because all they could produce cheaply with their hydraulic presses was diamond powder. They actually were to the point where they could make contiguous crystalline structures bigger than dust; however, the cost far exceeded that of the DeBeers extortion and international crime fee diamonds. Though GM abandoned the project for purely financial reasons, I'm sure that DeBeers was happy about it nonetheless.

        • Re:Geeks want to know... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @06:30AM (#6792308) Homepage
          There was an article in the most recent Pop Sci or Discover (I can't remember which) abotu two companies that have successfully made large-karat diamonds synthetically. One company in Florida, Gemology I think, hastered the hydraulic press and can produce a 3-karat diamond, with few flaws, for $100. Another company out of Boston, I believe, uses a plasma deposition method that produces better-than-nature flawless diamonds... 3k for $15. And this latter process promises to be able to deposit not just chunks (i.e. jewelry), but wafers (i.e. semiconductors!)

          Of course, the preseident of the latter of the two companies was at a diamond conference and was told by a DeBeers fellow that what he was doign was a good way to get a bullet in the head!
    • Read the latest Wired.

      The Diamonds used were probably created in a lab for about $5 a karat. ;)

      GJC

  • Hmm. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sekzscripting ( 687192 ) * on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:53AM (#6791274) Homepage
    Does anyone know how hot these things will get?

    • Re:Hmm. (Score:5, Informative)

      by wass ( 72082 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:23AM (#6791457)
      well, one of diamond's characteristics is high thermal conductivity, so presumably generated heat could easily be carried away with heat-sinking technologies.

    • Re:Hmm. (Score:3, Informative)

      by randyest ( 589159 )
      From the fine article:

      It is targeting devices with an operating frequency of 200 GHz and an output power of 30 W/mm.

      That's the output (RF, I assume) power of the chip. Not the total power consumption/dissipation of the device, which I would guess would be more like 200-100W. Serious cooling is necessary, of course, but I hear the diamond doesn't vary nearly as much with temperature as Si does, so heat is less of a problem.

      • Re:Hmm. (Score:5, Funny)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @05:40AM (#6792202) Homepage
        Serious cooling is necessary, of course, but I hear the diamond doesn't vary nearly as much with temperature as Si does, so heat is less of a problem.

        I don't know about that. I'm sure I'd be somewhat wary of having one of these chips in a laptop dissipating 30W/mm a few inches from *my* crotch. ;)

  • M$ Released new bloatware to slow it down... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:54AM (#6791278)
    in other news, M$ released Windows 2005 beta to NTT. "With instant messaging, help characters, voice response mouse buttons, and background autopatching, the operating system still takes 10 seconds to load Word." says Jerry Chang of M$ product development. "We feel this is the sweet spot. Give us Moore's Law, and we'll give the same speed you got used to in 1993."

  • Diamonds (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:54AM (#6791279)
    "CPUs are Forever" is not conducive to Moore's Law.

    • Re:Diamonds (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Would they be "free as in deBeers?"

  • Finally! (Score:5, Funny)

    by maxmg ( 555112 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:54AM (#6791282)
    I can give my wife a new processor for her birthday! I can see it now:
    "But it's an 18 carat Intel, darling!" - "WHACK"

  • Diamonds... (Score:2, Funny)

    by dafoomie ( 521507 )
    ...not just a girl's best friend anymore.

  • Memory? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord of the Fries ( 132154 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:56AM (#6791292) Homepage
    So with all the problems we're having these days getting data (memory) near all of these cycles, I can't even imagine what the situation would be with a processor built around these kinds of speeds.

    I'm imagining something like Dante's level 7 cache or something.

    • Re:Memory? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by digitalunity ( 19107 ) <digitalunity@yahTEAoo.com minus caffeine> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:06AM (#6791368) Homepage
      Highly unlikely. See, what you don't realize is that this technology will likely be utilised in memory before processors. One of the first verification processes in semiconductor technologies is 'can we make memory with it'. They start off simple and let the circuits get more complex from there. We'll likely see very high speed memory before you see a Pentium 5 or Athlon Diamond XP. This is a great boon for computing. Memory has been a large bottleneck for a long time.

      Imagine 1GB of processor core clock speed memory. That would be friggin amazing for databases :)

      • Re:Memory? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by kramer2718 ( 598033 )
        One of the first verification processes in semiconductor technologies is 'can we make memory with it'. They start off simple and let the circuits get more complex from there. So why, then, is the gap between processing speed and memory access speed growing?

        • Re:Memory? (Score:5, Informative)

          by aXis100 ( 690904 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:32AM (#6791501)
          Because you have to run those signals over wires, which do a really crappy job of conducting a high speed signal. On chip cache is certainly fast - just expensive (real estate and fabrication errors)

          At the sort of frequencies we're currently using, circuit tracks look more like inductors and capacitors than bits of wires. They essentially act as antennas, and there is a massive amount of effort spent in trying to avoid those effects.

          • Re:Memory? (Score:5, Informative)

            by SteveAyre ( 209812 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @02:13AM (#6791649)
            One reason which another poster mentioned is the data transfer over the bus between the CPU and Main Memory, this is usually a few inches which means the signal can take more than 10ns to travel along the bus (which is a significant amount of time in chip design).

            Another reason is that SRAM is used in a CPU for cache - its VERY fast but takes up more silicon per bit and is very expensive per bit.

            Main memory is generally made of DRAM which is slower but also much smaller so you can get a much larger amount of memory onto a chip and much cheaper.

            It's not that the latest technology isn't used in memory, it's just that its very expensive so it's used within the CPU as a cache while main memory will be slower in order to balance space vs cost for the machine to still be both affordable and usable.

            Once the price drops, the cache technology gets put into main memory and a newer faster one replaces it in the cache.

            The other big thing is that most of the advances in CPU speed are not due to the chip tecnology but due to design, especially pipelining.

            CPUs go through a series of stages (eg fetch-read-execute) and the CPU can take advantage of this by running each stage while the next stage is still running.

            This trick can't be taken advantage of in memory as memory does not contain several stages - hence pipelining increased cpu speed by something in the region of 5-10x while not increasing memory speed at all.

            It's mainly new design tricks like this that have made most of the speed advances, which is why processor speed increases at such a larger rate than memory speed.

            • Re:Memory? (Score:3, Informative)

              by Aceticon ( 140883 )
              I would like to point out 2 things:

              1) SRAM is actually Static RAM. It's very vast but it also requires a LOT more transistors per bit than DRAM - Dynamic RAM. I do believe that SRAM also consumes more energy than DRAM (i'm not absolutly sure). Don't expect SRAM to be use in Main Memory anytime soon (unless people are willing to pay the same for 100M as they pay today for 1G - and i'm being optimistic here)

              1b) Note that EDO memory, DRAM, SDRAM, DDRAM are all different technologies based around Dynamic RAM.

              • Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
                "Actually, improvements like pipelining don't affect the maximum clock frequency of a microprocessor (the GHz thing) very much. What they do improve is the average ammount of processing work that can be done per-clock-cycle."

                A 20-stage pipeline is one of the many reasons that the P4 runs SLOWER clock cycle-for-clock cycle than its predecessor or the Athlon.

                A 3 GHz P3 will trounce a 3 GHz P4. But because of its design, the P3 can't scale very far beyond 1 GHz. The P4, on the other hand, still has lots of

              • Re:Memory? (Score:5, Informative)

                by svirre ( 39068 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @10:31AM (#6793542)
                1) SRAM is actually Static RAM. It's very vast but it also requires a LOT more transistors per bit than DRAM - Dynamic RAM. I do believe that SRAM also consumes more energy than DRAM (i'm not absolutly sure). Don't expect SRAM to be use in Main Memory anytime soon (unless people are willing to pay the same for 100M as they pay today for 1G - and i'm being optimistic here)

                The typical SRAM structure is a 6T circuit (That is 6 transistors), while DRAM is 1T. DRAMS does however need to be refreshed with regular intervals as the capacitor that stores the bit is prone to leakage. This means the DRAM can never idle at virtually 0 power consumption.

                SRAMs therefore consume a lot less power than DRAMs when there are significant idle cycles.

          • Re:Memory? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by digitalunity ( 19107 ) <digitalunity@yahTEAoo.com minus caffeine> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @03:39AM (#6791882) Homepage
            That's exactly right. Even with all of the newest improvements in semiconductor technology and the resulting memory density(Remeber those old 512KB clunky SIMMS :) improvements, we are still placing the memory too far away from the processor. It should be closer(physically, logistically, electrically). With the new AMD Opteron, they got it right. Putting the memory controller on the processor is the first step in a long line of improvements that can be made. With a few more fundamental changes in design, memory might actually be able to keep up with processors in the future. One such design change would be getting the main memory bus off the motherboard PCB. With the memory controller on the processor itself, the compatability or portability of the memory modules between Opteron generations is no longer a viable excuse. There is no reason why the memory can't be a stacked silicon module that plugs into the side of the processor. That right there would solve quite a few problems as well as take full advantage of the Opteron's built-in memory controller and provide memory performance unchallenged by either DDR SDRAM or RDRAM technologies.

            I'm betting we'll see 1Ghz memory(not effective via DDR or QDR, I'm talking actual bus frequency) within 1 year from this day.

            Anyone wanna take my money?
    • Didn't level 7 have the burning desert where the sodomites were damned to wallow?

  • eh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Uninformed ( 107798 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @12:56AM (#6791295)
    "The diamond devices are expected to be in demand to replace with the vacuum tubes that are used in the high frequency, high-power applications such as receivers and transmitters at digital TV broadcasting stations."
    Now why wouldn't they think people would use them in computers?
  • If these get this fast and this hot, I can see now the idea of any form of material around it spontainiously combusting if a coolant system dies. Just think, no dust problems, it just incinerates in the case.

  • I'll finally be able to play an mp3 and scroll Slashdot in IE 6.0 with no skips!

  • What? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Izanagi ( 466436 )
    30 W/mm??

    Don't they mean 30 W/mm^2?

  • speed is no longer the point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:04AM (#6791350)
    the next big ceiling in CPU design is electricity consumption. Nobody cares about it in PCs now, but when CPUs start hitting several hundreds watts, businesses and home users will be forced to take it into consideration or else be badly burned each time they open their power bill.
    Making CPUs faster is all very nice, but the deciding point in purchasing an AMD vs Intel CPU in a couple of years may very well be in how much electricity it uses, even more so than how fast it is.

    • Re:speed is no longer the point (Score:5, Insightful)

      by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) * on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:59AM (#6791597) Homepage
      The solution here is simply to have CPUs sleep, i.e. run with reduced speed, or no clock at all after a few uS idle time until the next interrupt. Most chips are quite capable of switching to much lower clock speeds on the fly, but for some reason this technique is only really used in laptops. It only takes a microsecond to change speed, so there is absolutely no user-perceptible impact.

      Also it is MUCH easier that doing a full "suspend" (powering down PCI cards and peripherals) because you don't have to reinitialize all that stuff when you wake up.

      • Re:speed is no longer the point (Score:4, Informative)

        by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <slashdot.monkelectric@com> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @04:04AM (#6791948)
        Actually, if you run any of the NT kernel OS's (NT4, 2k, XP, etc) your computer is already "sleeping". Its been awhile since I've done any assembley, but IIRC the command is called "hlt" (halt), aptly named because it halts all cpu activity until the next hardware interrupt or some timeout value. Thats how it worked in the early 90's, theres probably a more sophisticated instruction now, but the fundamentals should be the same.

        Mobile processors can usually alter their clock on the fly, but this requires tight intergration with the motherboard circuitry which is traditionally responsible for generating the CPU clock (which could probably also be programmed to overclock).

        • Mobile processors can usually alter their clock on the fly, but this requires tight intergration with the motherboard circuitry which is traditionally responsible for generating the CPU clock (which could probably also be programmed to overclock).

          That's not correct, actually. The CPU reference clock is generated outside of the CPU, but it gets multiplied inside the CPU. So, when a mobile CPU wants to slow itself down, it just reduces the multiplier, while the reference clock remains the same

    • Re:speed is no longer the point (Score:5, Informative)

      by aXis100 ( 690904 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @02:06AM (#6791619)
      Faster switching speed does have benefits in power reduction.

      One on the main causes of heating in semiconductors is the switching performance. Whilst a transistor is "on", voltage accross it is zero (or near to), current high, power dissipation (equals voltage * current) is low. Whilst a transistor is "off", voltage accross it is high, current is zero, power dissipation low. However, during the transition from on/off, voltage and current levels are both intermediate, hence power dissipation occurs. Faster switching response times means less dissipation during switching.

    • Re:speed is no longer the point (Score:4, Interesting)

      by anthonyrcalgary ( 622205 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @02:07AM (#6791623)
      It already is a consideration in many settings. Rackmount systems are the first to notice because of the density. As I understand it, any processor over 50 watts is pushing it for 1U applications. I think Sun is going to use mobile Athlon 64's for just that reason.

      With Prescott set to top 100 watts, I think we've hit the limit of what desktop users are willing to tolerate. We're into "can't run it on summer afternoons" territory already. I've been using my laptop at home because of it.

  • Wow a 3 to 300 ghz signal with high output. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ratfynk ( 456467 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:05AM (#6791360) Journal
    This tech has some serious military applications.
    Killing devices like the star drek phaser is not that far off. The high energy output potential because of the thermal characteristics is scarry! Just imagine if the output of a cell phone could have a signal db and directional capable antenna. Yipes you could get scrambled brains if the antenna was too close. The radar and remote sensor applications for this could kick current US stealth tech out the window as well.

  • Hey honey! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Botchka ( 589180 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:06AM (#6791369)
    Can I borrow your wedding ring for the lan party??
  • I noticed one thing... Anytime there's an article where nobody really understand the concept or the technology underneath it, for example like this one... And what did fellow slashdotters do? Crack jokes over it.. You guys are outrageous! ;-)

  • So if CPUs are diamond... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ro'que ( 153060 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:14AM (#6791402)
    ...does that mean we'll have cubic zarconium CPUs for the cheapos? I can just see my dad buying me a glass CPU while Jimmy down the street gets a diamond one.

    "But boy, you can't even tell the difference! Look at it gleam in the light!"

    "Dad, that's the case lighting on fire."

  • Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? (Score:5, Informative)

    by endersdad ( 181957 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:15AM (#6791413)
    This lengthy article [theatlantic.com] gives a fascinating history into how the DeBeers cartel has created artificial scarcity in the diamond market and convinced the western world that a "Diamond is Forever". Before the 19th century, no one ever had to spend 6 weeks salary on an engagement ring!

  • "Funny" moderation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Boing ( 111813 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:21AM (#6791447)
    Okay, seriously moderators, it's time to stop moderating "diamonds are a geek's best friend" and "maybe now I can give my girlfriend a [heavy-duty graphics chip of the day] for our anniversary" as Funny. Every freakin slashdot article that mentions diamonds in any context has these jokes. That's what the "redundant" tag is for. :)

  • Will DeBeers be the new RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <ben@@@int...com> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:22AM (#6791453) Homepage
    Anyone who's bothered to do the research into it knows that DeBeers is about as evil [amazon.com] as a multinational can get. Somehow I doubt that they are going to play nice with another industry that wants to use thier bread and butter product for making something that doesn't cost $100,000 a gram.

    As I see it, there are one of only two outcomes here:

    #1) Someone finds a way to make cheap diamonds, and DeBeers goes after them (in more ways than just the legal route) to make sure that #2 happens.

    which brings me to

    #2) Nobody finds a way to make cheap diamonds, and DeBeers can triple their prices. Of course, the diamond supply is already kept artifically low to drive up prices, so meeting this new demand won't be a problem at all (it'll just cost you the price of a small car to buy a CPU.)

    I don't like this one bit...nope...not one bit. As if Microsoft's monopoly wasn't bad enough.

    • Re:Will DeBeers be the new RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gerardrj ( 207690 ) * on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:33AM (#6791503) Journal
      There is already a way to make cheap diamonds. It's done every day. They are called "industrial diamonds" and are grown in labs. The grown diamonds are created for their strength, not their color or clarity. They are used as abrasives, and as tips for precision cutting blades. DeBeers I think couldn't care less about this market.

      There are also other companies that have developed processes to grow gem grade and sized diamonds that are in almost every way indisiguishable from a "natural" diamond. These processess in particular are what led DeBeers to start laser coding their diamonds for authenticity. Growing gem grade diamonds scares the jeebies out of DeBeers, and they will either make it illegal, or find some dubious means to crush any attempts at it.

    • This was actually linked in an above comment, and in the slashdot article linked to in the story heading but Wired [wired.com] has a really good article [wired.com] about just this topic.

      The basic idea is that (unfortunatly) there are just a few players out there, but (fortunately) they're big players. They intend to revolutionize computing the same way the mosfet did, etc. I don't know all the science and stuff, but basically they're getting able to make high quality, super good, diamonds synthetically, fairly reliably, and fair

  • This month's issue of Wired Magazine has artificial diamonds [wired.com] as its cover story. Just finished reading it a few hours ago. Very interesting as to where this is going to take the diamond jewelry business (DeBeer's is in trouble) as well as the semiconductor industry.
  • I've seen stories of Intel showing off their 10 GHz CMOS transistor (or inverter gate, which would be 2 transistors), but at that signaling rate *nothing* can get done between @(posedge clock). P4's 20-stage pipeline would grow to 400 or more (latch, and-gate, latch, repeat). Imagine the size of the Out-of-Order execution units on that CPU.

    So, while the clock rate is impressive, it probably isn't doing anything effective in the first place. They're just red-lining their cars in neutral.
  • Diamond Memory Modules (aka DMM) would have to be used with these things I suspect. For such a jump in speed would also require a similare jump in memory capacity, and speed. Saddly I don't know how this tech would equate to memory density, but if anything the increased speed would be nice.

    Secondly, I remember seeing something on television once that described the multi-national diamon cartel DeBears (spelling?) as attempting to halt the commercialization of artificial diamons. Certainly natural diamons h
    • I dont think memory speed is necesarily the issue - we allready have some technology for that.

      AFAIK, the real issue is bus bandwidth. This tech might help with fast serial busses - maybe using optics? Plain parallel wires get a bit tricky aroung that frequency region.

  • Closer than some people think. (Score:5, Informative)

    by niko9 ( 315647 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:48AM (#6791556)
    I was a little surprised nobody mentioned this story [slashdot.org] that was posted recently here.

    If this man and his product really pan out, we could see some eally exciting advances in the semiconductor industry. But there could be a billion dollar enterprise that might think otherewise.

    A quote from said artice:

    But De Beers wasn't backing down. Throughout 2000, the cartel accelerated its Gem Defensive Programme, sending out its testing machines - dubbed DiamondSure and DiamondView - to the largest international gem labs. Traditionally, these labs analyzed and certified color, clarity, and size. Now they were being asked to distinguish between man-made and mined. The DiamondSure shines light through a stone and analyzes its refractory characteristics. If the gem comes up suspicious, it must be tested with the DiamondView, which uses ultraviolet light to reveal the crystal's internal structure. "Ideally the trade would like to have a simple instrument that could positively identify a diamond as natural or synthetic," De Beers scientists wrote in 1996, when the company unveiled plans to develop authentication devices. "Unfortunately, our research has led us to conclude that it is not feasible at this time to produce such an ideal instrument, inasmuch as synthetic diamonds are still diamonds physically and chemically."

  • Perspective; a long way to go (Score:5, Informative)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @02:50AM (#6791741)
    Very few people are understanding what the article is saying

    The research teams have been able to fabricate semiconductor gates. In other words, they have probably been able to make a couple lone transistors (on/off electrical amplification switches) on a substrate lying in a lab with very controlled conditions -- long way off from computer processing.

    You can run Doom on this about as easily as you can run Quake with your bedroom lightswitch...

  • Optical Routers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by quinkin ( 601839 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @02:58AM (#6791766)
    A big problem with optical routers at the moment is that the electronic components can't keep pace with the optical components.

    This is part of the reason why the fibre optic revolution has been more of a slow turn... fast pipes are great, but it helps if you know where to send them.

    81GHz isn't going to solve the problem - but it will help.

    Q.

  • Perfect crystal diamonds are about to get cheap (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @03:08AM (#6791796) Homepage
    De Beers is going to hate it, but they can't stop it. Compared to the semiconductor industry, the diamond industry is dinky. Total annual worldwide diamond production is only around $7 billion. Intel alone has four times the revenue of the entire diamond industry.

    Apollo Diamond [apollodiamond.com] is now making near perfect crystal diamonds by vapor deposition. Their product has fewer flaws than natural diamonds. Since the diamond jewelry industry has been making a big deal out of "flawless" diamonds for a century, they're stuck - the industrial process is better than the natural one. Semiconductor process technology has been making near perfect crystals of silicon, quartz, sapphire, ruby, etc. for years, after all. This is just the next step.

    Sapphires used to be rare gems. Not anymore. Linde Chemical started making synthetic star sapphires in the 1970s. Then sapphires went into volume production. Then the patents ran out. This [maintechsapphires.com] is where the sapphire industry is now:

    • We can currently supply ingots, blanks, windows and wafers up to 200 mm in diameter, bar stock up to 100 mm square and ribbons up to 80 mm wide. All sapphire products are available in stages ranging from raw through polished for epitaxial growth. With six grades of synthetic sapphire, Maintech is sure to meet needs of the customers. Processors and end users now have an opportunity to take advantage of extraordinary prices from Maintech, Inc. Normal turnaround time is FOUR WEEKS!

    A few years, and bulk diamonds will be on the Home Shopping Channel.

    • A few years, and bulk diamonds will be on the Home Shopping Channel.

      I keep telling people and nobody believes me, but how they could have missed THIS [wired.com] Wired article is beyond me.

      As if the HOT CHICK covered in CHEAP DIAMONDS wasn't enough to attract any geek, the mention of revelutionary cheap processors should have been like pheromones to the poor diamond clad lady. (She dare not show up to a lan party dressed like that...)

      Anyway, the Wired article was mentioned here at Slashdot a few weeks ago, and I p

  • Space Shuttle???? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by willtsmith ( 466546 ) on Tuesday August 26, 2003 @01:17PM (#6795691) Journal
    Given that the final shuttle accident report was released today, I'm surprised that no-one else has touched on this topic.

    The Reinforced-Carbon-Carbon panels have been noted to get very pitted and pot-marked over time. Indeed there has always been serious concerns over this component.

    Given the chemical process for synthesizing diamond wafers, isn't it reasonable to deposit a single sheet part super heat conductive material that would replace the reinforced-carbon-carbon on the space shuttle wings. Diamond is the hardest substance known to man. Isn't it reasonable that such a macro-application would be reasonable and logical.

    Other near term application could be heat sinks in other industrial super-heated applications. I could even imagine sythesizing the linings of cannon barrels out of sheet diamond. How about aircraft "black boxes" made out of sythesized diamond so that they absoluetly CANNOT be destroyed.

    On more application could be to organically grow the hull of a small submarine capable of diving to tremendous depths. A sufficiently polished application could be optically transparent!!!! That is no portholes required. Remember "transparent aluminum" from star trek. A chemically deposited transparent diamond panel could probably kick it's ass in strenth.

    How about armor for tanks, helicopters and planes???? A thin panel may be stronger then the most exotic alloy.

    A sufficiently advaned systhesizing process may be capable of produce "machine grade" parts that will effectively NEVER wear.

    The 20th century was the century of steel. With a reliable diamond production process, and technology that generates carbon nanon-tube threads (as well as bucky ball "bearings"), this could be the century of carbon!!!!!!

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