IBM's Snowflake Microchips 92
Phantom of the Opera writes "The BBC reports that using self-assembled polymers and copying natural patterns, IBM hopes to have microchips that are 30% faster and consume 15% less energy. The secret? Adding a little nothing in all the right places."
Boo (Score:5, Funny)
IBM: (Score:0)
News at 11.
Re:IBM: (Score:2, Funny)
Global warming is showing signs of 30% growth with 15% decrease in greenhouse gas production.
-- Time Skip --
The global flooding theories are proven incorrect as the polar ice caps are turning directly into steam.
-- Time Skip --
Wolverine is found dead in the bathtub, with melted adamantium due to the heat. In other news Earth is now proclaimed hottest terrestrial planet, eat your heart out Venus.
Re:Boo (Score:3, Funny)
fatduck writes:
"What happened to the provocative, editorializing troll-summaries? How am I supposed to start a heated argument based purely on speculation? You give me what, two sentences, like you want me to read TFA? Well, fuck you. Self-assembling polymers? Copying natural patterns? Who makes these things, IBM, or CYBERDYNE? What if these get into the hands of our children? Will the next school shooting be 30% faster and 15% more efficient?"
I wonder what the Slashdot community will say about this?
> [+] hardware, ibm, technology (tagging beta)
Re:Boo (Score:5, Funny)
- RG>
just wait (Score:1)
this is just a "dry run" the good stuff will be in the dupe
Re:Boo (Score:0)
OK Software geeks . . . (Score:5, Informative)
I'll default to a "wait & see" perspective, but this has a firm basis in device physics.
One of the major speed limiting factors in microelectronics is capacitive loading. With the tiny scale of contemporary semiconductors "wire capacitance" has become the dominant delay factor. Since the wires are so close together, adjacent wires produce a parasitic capacitance effect(extra load on the circuits) similar to this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_plate_capac
(The article on parasitic cap didn't say much)
As you can see, this capacitance varies directly with the size of the wires, is inversely proportional to the distance between them(shrinking all the time with new process technologies), and directly proportional to the "dielectric constant" of the material between them.
Air has a dielectric constant of ~1.00. Silicon Dioxide, the typical insulator in semiconductors is ~3.9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-k [wikipedia.org]
Other glass-like materials have been experimented with, but I haven't read about many successes.
So, essentially if you could "leave out" the SiO2 insulating material, you could reduce the parasitic capacitance of the wires by a factor of 3.9. Nothing to scoff at if you can actually pull it off.
Re:OK Software geeks . . . (Score:3, Funny)
Re:OK Software geeks . . . (Score:2, Informative)
Question (Score:2)
Re:Question (Score:2)
Re:Question (Score:1)
"Those dots are then etched away in a chemical process, forming holes, which are then capped to create a vacuum."
Unless I am reading it wrong, we're not even talking about the dielectric of air here, we're talking about a vacuum! Now a vacuum is defined as a dielectric of 1 (or maybe I should say, all dielectric values are defined based off of a vacuum). I don't know what kind of an effect it actually has though--could someone tell me if an actual vacuum (or close to it) is a special case? I'd like to see a lightning bolt in outer space (if possible)
As for decreasing the dielectric, what I do know is that means less leakage leads to less power use and therefore heat creation overall. The easiest way to take advantage to that is to simply increase the voltage and clock rate until you reach the previous power use. That scaling is certainly not linear (it's exponential I believe), so perhaps they are doing something else...
Re:Question (Score:1)
A vacuum has a constant of 1.00 and air is like 1.04. The extra savings is marginal when you're comparing it to '3'
"As for decreasing the dielectric, what I do know is that means less leakage"
Where do you get that from? Most of the leakage in semiconductors is from sub-threshold transistor operation, which has nothing to do with the wires. The other leakage is "gate" leakage, and to mitigate that, you want something with a very high dielectric constant.
Re:Question (Score:2)
Well, "air" would be close to ideal from an electrical perspective. That would minimize capacitance between adjacent wires. Think of "capacitance" as a barrel that holds electrical charge. You have to fill the barrel with charge to turn a '0' into a '1'. Given that a transistor of a certain size can only pump so much charge, the larger the barrel(larger capacitance), the longer it takes to fill it up, which means that the chip runs more slowly.
Air isn't possible however because you need something with mechanical strength as well. The wires in a chip need to be done in layers, sometimes 8 or more. You do metal wiring on one layer, then fill in the spaces and cover it over with a silicide glass. You then do another layer of wiring and tunnel down through the glass(insulator) to the wires and transistors on the layers below through a vertical hole called a "via". It isn't manufacturable without some filler material to make a planar surface for the next layer of wiring. Imagine that done 8 times. You have 8 planes of this maze of metal wires a few tenths of microns apart, with a bunch of vertical pieces which span one or more of the planes. Even if it could be manufactured, the slightest jolt would annihilate it.
Mechanical issues also rule out many other materials with lower dielectric constants. Anything with a high "coefficient of thermal expansion"(quantifies expansion of a material with temp change) is out because expansion and contraction would bend and break the wires. So, the trick is to find something with a low dielectric constant, which has suitable mechanical qualities as well.
Re:Boo (Score:-1, Offtopic)
^^^ warning: spoilers ^^^
Re:Boo (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Boo (Score:0)
Re:Boo (Score:2)
Did you ever stop to think, how are they going to actually get a lot faster? This technology is part of the story behind how chips are going to get faster. It will be combined with other technologies so that we can keep up with the demand for increasing performance. Chips don't just get faster on their own, there's a whole industry working on it.
Re:Boo (Score:1)
Re:Boo (Score:2)
Ooh, but then there'd the great turtleneck drought of '07. Would be boring my great grandchildren to tears with that tail, I would.
Re:Boo (Score:0)
Nature's Little Inventor (Score:4, Interesting)
I know it comes as a surprise to no one that Mother Nature has some truly incredible engineering at work. I still, however, find it fascinating and amazing when examples like this come to light; I feel we will continue to see a lot more discoveries like this for the foreseeable future
I have two questions for Slashdot: Are there any other unique examples of learning from nature that you'd like to bring to light? And on a different note, do you think nature has perfected certain tasks and that its engineering can not be surprassed (at least in some areas), or are there things that even nature hasn't perfected?
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:1)
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I think that you can step back and view all of 'nature' and include humanity. If you do, I think you will come to the surprising conclusion that humans are just another step on the path. I am not saying the path leads anywhere, but you see a sort of progression going on.
Picture the universe how it was. It used to just be a mess of boring old atom parts. The parts formed up into atoms, and the atoms started forming up into molecules. Now, there are some molecules out there that form pretty easily. Hydrogen merrily grabs other hydrogens, carbon loves a pair of oxygen, so and and so forth. We are still talking about a pretty simple universe. At some point more interesting things started to happen. These molecules started to form into more complex molecules. Long complex strands of organic molecules started popping up (among other things). The universe is starting to get a little more diverse at this point. On Earth, at some point, these organic molecules started to show some really crazy behavior. They started self assembling into even more complex structures and forms. We have a sort of non-biotic evolution going on that slowly leads to more complex molecules and systems of molecules. At some point, we get the first bits and pieces of life.
Once life shows up, things really kick into over drive. This slow multi-billion year process that got us basic organic molecules explodes as pieces of the universe come together to form the truly complex chemical system that makes up life. Evolution takes over and life begins to change rapidly. We are still talking about single celled organisms. At some point in a not-too-distant-past (well, on a cosmic scale) life started to get really complex, really quickly, as multi-celled organisms burst onto the scene. At some point, in just a blink of an eye on the cosmic scale, humans popped up from the evolution of multi-celled life.
With the introduction of humans, this natural evolution towards complexity dramatically speeds up. Non-biotic evolution was slow. Biotic evolution was faster, but still took millions of years. Intelligence though... that was fast. Where evolution found it was by tedious chance, intelligence could find its way through rapid (although messy) computation. Throw in language and writing which allows easier data retention, and intelligence gets even faster.
There is a theme to this. Greater complexity, faster and faster. Personally, I think that we are on the cusp of the next great revolution in this universe. In the same way the universe moving from random molecules bumping around to evolution, and moving from evolution to intelligence was a dramatic change, I think we are on the cusp of the next revolution. The next revolution is of course strong AI, which can create ever accelerating growth in intelligence. I am not saying it is good or bad, just that it is next. I think to separate intelligence and (eventually) AI from evolution and molecules randomly bouncing off each other misses a larger trend. It isn't human Vs inhuman, it is the universe rapidly finding better ways to create more complex systems, and create them faster and faster.
So, to go back to the original poster... I don't think you really can separate the works of man from the works of nature. A computer is a work of nature at its finest. The fact that a computer is wrought from human intelligence doesn't make it any less an awesome work of nature then a monkey that got to be the way it is through evolution, or a molecule that got to be the way it is through a chemical reaction. The greatest work of nature (from my perspective of course, it isn't like 'nature' has a goal in mind) is human intelligence. That said, I doubt that intelligence is the last step on the path. I think the greatest works of nature are yet to come.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:1)
The problem, as you say, is that as soon as we can code an algorithm to solve a task, that task is no longer considered to require intelligence. I blame the fact that we don't actually know wtf 'intelligence' is. All attempts to define it that I've seen are circular. Eventually, I don't doubt we'll have algorithms to solve any task a human could reasonably be expected to solve (so I guess I'm a strong AI proponent); will we then be forced to define ourselves as unintelligent? Or will we be forced to conclude that our code is intelligent? Most likely, it seems to me, is that we'll simply end up defining intelligence as "what humans do to solve problems". Kind of like what we had to do with swimming when submarines were invented.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
The problem, as you say, is that as soon as we can code an algorithm to solve a task, that task is no longer considered to require intelligence.
If that is the case, it seems to me that the Holy Grail would be an automated way to find practical algorithms for arbitrary tasks. Humans can eventually investigate and fumble their way towards the solution to a given problem. The more humans looking at the problem the more likely it is that an individual or team will find the solution. When we can make a machine that can do that over a broad range of tasks then we'll have a strong AI to talk about.Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
I've never really seen a definition for intelligence. Most people just give examples of what they think it means. I suppose you could apply this statement to any human state. What is love, hate, etc.?
So for my example; computers seem to have a very hard time with guess work. It seems to come naturally to humans. Humans guess at an answer, test their guess, and feed the results into a new guess. Though computers are better then us at modeling data, they stumble on the guess work. They need everything in concrete numbers. Abstract thought doesn't boil down to programmatic algorithms very well.
It's funny. I've heard so many stories about accidental discoveries. Maybe computers are just too perfect. Perhaps they need flaws and mistakes to gain intelligence.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:4, Interesting)
If there is going to be a singularity (I don't really see why there wouldn't) strong AI wouldn't be the really world-changing thing. Humanoid robots are way, way, old school, and not really that interesting. The interesting thing would be what would happen when humanity is networked together with a high-speed connection, without a bottleneck at the eyeballs.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
On a more serious note, if we ever do get a high bandwidth brain-computer link, I wonder what that will do for brain development and education? While it would be nice to have the ability to download new skills (a la 'The Matrix'), I somehow think there are other limiting factors (I won't get into the need to train the rest of the nervous and muscular systems before one can say "Whoa, I know Kung Fu").
Good thinking fodder though. I'll plod my low bandwith way through it some more after I do some work.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:1)
But how fast are they moving information, as opposed to filling air with sound?
Like, you know I wouldn't even, like call some of those, like, extra like, sounds somthing like "error correction", you know, but just like, like more like extraneous junk, like you know, like junk DNA, you know. Unless of course junk DNA turns out to actually be useful, once we learn more about it.
Junk DNA (Score:0)
Also, since chromosomes recombine, if the recombination occurs in 'Junk DNA' (DNA that doesn't code for a gene), then that means the gene itself is safe from being changed in a potentially negative way, whilst still remaining 'mobile' within the chromosome/s.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
Most people really don't understand exponential* growth... Take a hint: It starts slow, very slow.
Not saying we'll see AI in our lifetime (altough lots of people really think we will), but it may be just around the corner, and still your analisys wouldn't see that.
* Technology is growing at exponential or highter than exponential rate everywhere, even on IA. An highter than exponential rate is different, because it starts slower.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:1)
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
I would love to see strong AI in my lifetime, but I'm not going to hold my breath, nor am I going to waste my time researching it until we know more about its required foundations.
You skipped a step (Score:0)
How is it that there is a "natural selection" for inanimate objects? How can such beautiful, non-living structures be works of randomness? There has to be an intelligent creator-being, no?
Re:You skipped a step (Score:3, Interesting)
I also don't see how people who believe in evolution etc don't see how if something evolves enough it would be a 'god' to us anyway. It seems that all these people choose to believe that we are the most advanced intelligence/power going, they want to feel in control.
Re:You skipped a step (Score:0)
Re:You skipped a step (Score:2)
Re:You skipped a step (Score:1)
Re:You skipped a step (Score:2)
Give God a little credit. If there is a God, he doesn't need to use magic every thirty seconds to keep the universe on the track that he wants it. A truly omnipotent god would have flicked off the big bang and walked away, trusting in its omnipotence to be able to flick off the big bang in such a way that all that it wanted would come to pass.
Think of it like this. If you are a skilled bowler, you can roll a bowling ball in such a way that you knock over all of the pins. You angle, spin, and toss the ball in such a way that it hits all the pins it needs to hit. You don't throw the bowling ball down the lane, then cry "oh shit!" and run after it to correct its course (if you are good bowler).
If there is a god, I highly doubt that it cries "oh shit!" from time to time and needs to use magic to correct the universe. If there is a god, I imagine that it can enact its will and create a universe using only laws of nature that we humans can find and understand. To insinuate that God needs to reach down every now and then and 'fix' the universe by hand is to insinuate that God is less-then omnipotent and needs to correct its mistakes.
Re:You skipped a step (Score:2)
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singul
I think it is a very interesting theory - basically it states that up to now we have had exponential growth in significant "paradigm" shifts. While the first human technologies took 1000s of years to develop, today there is some revolution in technology every few years.
Singularity claims that when AIs become smart enough to take over the human's role in designing technology (and themselves), we will experience something faster than exponential growth.
This is a very similar pattern to what happened with ICs. The first computers were meticulously hand-built by people. Within a few years, computer aided design helped humans build faster, more impressive computers in a fraction of the time. Chip synthesis tools now allow us to design chips with a few 100 lines of code. While chips have remained "only" exponential in growth, this is more of a limitation of the chemical and physical properties than the design limitations.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
Moore's law is an economical one. Companies simply don't have enough money to spped things up, and semiconductor fctories are really expensive.
Nature's Orgy (Score:2)
It's a regular atomic orgy!
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:1)
The human body is a poor solution for many of the tasks that it performs. Ask anyone with cruciate ligament injuries.
If you spent a billion engineer-years on designing something that could hunt, climb trees, AND swim, you'd come up with something very different to the current design.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
Tonsils, appendix, wisdom teeth - useless things that often need to be removed because they cause trouble
Only redundant in some essential systems (kidneys, eyes, lungs) but not others (heart, liver)
Limited storage space - the reason the brain is so folded over is because it's run out of room in the skull
Terrible vision compared to cats, eagles
No ability to hibernate (bears) or regrow limbs (starfish, some lizards)
The human body is far from perfect.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
There wouldn't be any issue with proving prior art.
Regards.
energy storage inspired by biological structure (Score:0)
A Sponge's Guide to Nano-Assembly
A new way to create complex nanostructures will improve batteries and solar panels.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/16959/ [technologyreview.com]
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw some stuff in college where they were studying fulgurites (the glass created when lightning hits sand) for the optimal method of injecting plastic into molds. Lighting will always take the path of least resistance. So you have a part you want to mold, they'd pack it full of sand and then hit it with artificial lightning. They'd then study the way that the lightning propagated through the sand to determine the way that all the injection lines should run.
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:1)
Re:Nature's Little Inventor (Score:2)
1. spider silk.
2. insect flight.
Twofo GNAA (Score:-1, Troll)
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Obligatory Simpsons reference (Score:4, Funny)
Homer, meanwhile, uses a pickaxe to make some speed holes in his own
car.
Ned: Whatcha diddely-doin', neighbor?
Homer: Aw, putting speed holes in my car. Makes it go faster.
Ned: Is that so? Well, gee, maybe the old Flanders-mobile could use
some -- [a shot rings out] aah! [Ned collapses]
[he gets up slowly] Wow! Lucky I always keep a bible close to
my heart -- [boom!] aah! [Ned collapses]
[he gets up] Ho ho, lucky I was wearing an extra large piece of
the True Cross today. I think I'll go inside.
[a shot hits Homer's pick axe]
Homer: What keeps doing that?
Tony: I told you we should have bought more than three bullets. Let's
just grab him!
-- Louie the henchman, not the marksman, "Homer the Clown"
Re:Obligatory Simpsons reference (Score:1)
IBM? (Score:0, Offtopic)
Who cares about IBM.....I'm on a MacIntel now.....
Re:IBM? (Score:0)
out of nothing at all (Score:1, Funny)
wait, what (Score:1)
Is this sort of like the proof that 2 = 1 or what
Re:wait, what (Score:2)
Ha! Reminds me of a funny quote I read somewhere :
At the beginning, there was nothing. God said "Let there be light!". There was still nothing, but now you could see it.
Do they... (Score:0)
First post! (Score:0)
But seriously...
Step 1: Create fast microchips that consume less energy
Step 2: Get sued by the oil companies for making them lose money
Step 3: Profit!
Re:First post! (Score:1)
Phase 1: Create microchips
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit
Just like a snowflake. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just like a snowflake. (Score:1)
Behold Slashdot...
Two Snowflakes May Be Alike After All [slashdot.org]
Vacuum holes? (Score:2, Funny)
BBC covered it so....? (Score:-1)
fucking faggots (Score:-1, Flamebait)
snowflakes (Score:1, Redundant)
kill all jews says the sand nigger (Score:-1, Troll)
The process mimics... (Score:4, Funny)
Does this mean that they drop the silicon from 3 miles up and then try to catch it on their tongues?
Re:The process mimics... (Score:2, Funny)
Snoflakes and Solar Panels (Score:4, Informative)
And yesterday we saw a slashdot article [slashdot.org] referencing work at Rice U, Los Almos Labs, and others, where 5 to 8 nanometer quantum dots on the surface of phovoltaic cells could significantly multiply the efficiency (perhaps into the 60% range) by efficiently creating multiple electron-hole pairs per incoming photon.
Seems to me the two are just ASKING to be combined into an inexpensive manufacturing process for high-efficiency solar panels.
Doubling to quadrupling the output of solar panels while keeping the cost in the current ballpark might push photovoltaic past the cost-breakeven point compared to grid power for rural and even suburban housing loads. And that could lead to enough production to bring in additional economies of scale and drive the price point farther.
This could be big.
Mimicking Nature - (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm - I need to make that a bit more snappy
Re:Mimicking Nature - (Score:1)
Hmmm - I need to make that a bit more snappy
New fab (Score:4, Funny)
I for one... (Score:0)
-=ThX=-
So... (Score:2, Funny)
Calm down, it's only a mask (Score:2, Interesting)
Copper wire is not inlaid into silicon chips, as far as I know. I don't think they meant copper wire.
This doesn't have anything to do with snowflakes or nature. Just a self-assembling polymer that can be used as a mask to etch holes in the oxide layer of the silicon chip, making the oxide a better insulator.
Re:Calm down, it's only a mask (Score:1)
Re:Calm down, it's only a mask (Score:3, Informative)
Tweak the ratio? (Score:3, Interesting)
But what of consistancy! (Score:2, Funny)
Stop right there! (Score:0)
You're violating my patent!
-God
/. must be out of shape today (Score:1)
I would like to see some data of this new LowK (Score:2)
fragility (Score:1)
I suppose it's possible they might be stronger, but that would be a coincidence... they didn't do this for strength.
So, 30% faster and 15% more efficient ... (Score:2)
As semiconductor devices scale smaller and smaller, making features on the chips becomes increasingly expensive as we transcend the range across which past lithography-based fabrication techniques operate effectively. This seems like it might have the potential to produce some features at a much lower cost than via masks and multiple layers of etched handiwork. And it might have room to scale smaller while maintaining the same cost profile. So it's possible that the biggest percentage improvements might be related to cost.
Of course, all that will have to wait for actual engineering experience to know for sure, but it certainly seems like it might have potential in that area.