NASA Building Massively Heat-Resistant Chips

coondoggie writes "NASA researchers have designed and built a new circuit chip that can take the heat of a blast furnace and keep on performing. Silicon carbide (SiC) chips can operate at 600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit where conventional silicon-based electronics — limited to about 350 C — would fail. The new silicon carbide differential amplifier integrated circuit chip may provide benefits to anything requiring long-lasting electronic circuits in very hot environments such as jets, spacecraft, and industrial machinery. In particular, NASA said SiC applications will include energy storage, renewable energy, nuclear power, and electrical drives."

Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This gives an update for my macbook pro.

Too Bad

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Its too bad, we could have used this when the Pentium 4 Prescott came out...

That sound you hear

[SpiffyMarc]

is hundreds of champagne corks popping simultaneously at the AMD campus.

Not what we need

[athdemo]

A bunch of geeks eventually running hardware at thousands of degrees in their cluttered, and probably somehow very flammable, rooms.

It is about damn time

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell you how many times I have accidentally left my computer in the blast furnace. It is so annoying when it won't work after that!

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[BadAnalogyGuy]

This could help my girlfriend

Every time she tries to use a laptop, it melts because... she is so hot.

Maybe you should take her in for repairs. If the battery is from Sony, you may risk serious fire damage.

Sorry, OT...

[pushing-robot]

600 degrees Celsius or 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit

I love those "pull-significant-digits-out-of-my-ass" unit conversions.

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[Bodrius]

Ah, the moderation conundrum:

Should this be +1 Funny for using the words "my girlfriend" in Slashdot, or does the lameness of the other joke cancel it out?

Re:CPUs..

[QuickFox]

That is pretty cool.

Cool? You think these chips are cool? I'd hate to be in a place you think is hot.

Venus: Here we come!

[chris_sawtell]

Venus darling, Please don't get alarmed, but those wretched Earthlings have made a super-dooper hot-stuff control whatsit. You'd better watch out because from what I hear that super-hot atmospheric condom of your's isn't going to protect you from frequent and repeated penetration much longer. Sorry to be such a harbinger, but I just thought you ought to know. Haved a chat to Mars, he knows all about what they get up to.

Hey, NASA's capabilities are increasing by leaps

[patio11]

Now the chips which will execute the

    distanceInFeet = distanceInFeet + deltaInMeters;

calculation are heat resistant.

(Hey, only kidding guys. I mean, we all make mistakes. Of course, I don't expect you to be rocket scie... oh, wait. Well, its not like you had ten billion dollars of... oh, wait. Well, the point of it is, you can still make mistakes.)

Re:Great idea

[Architect_sasyr]

No no... they are going to put it into Dell Laptops and bring back the old battery model's ;)

Re:This could help my girlfriend

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time she tries to use a laptop, it melts because... she is so hot.

I know it is lonely being a geek, but your soldering iron is not a substitute for human companionship.

Re:Love the name...

[Tablizer]

So, when are we getting these in workstations? Although, my current laptop tends to get pretty hot, I don't think I would want 1600 degrees on my nuts

Heat-resistant nuts are their next project.
     

In related news....

[NerveGas]

    Intel re-released the Pentium-D line, using this technology.

Re:A=A if you ignore B

[BadAnalogyGuy]

you could also just go back and build a Pentium out of vac.tubes

I gotta tell you. I just did this. What a difference! It has this quality that's hard to describe. A kind of warmth that I just don't get from silicon transistors.

Awesome News!

[sunspot42]

Now hardware capable of running it is finally available, Duke Nukem Forever should be released any day now!

Re:Too Bad

[uolamer]

my P4 Prescott 3.2ghz still running quite well in my living room.. I keeps the room nice and warm too, in the winter i have to overclock it to 3.9ghz to keep from turning on the heater tho..

Re:CPUs..

[budgenator]

pretty cool, getting moded flamebait in a thread about an IC chip that'll run in a blast furness!

Zardoz!

[crovira]

Remember the 'McGuffin' in Zardoz?

It was a diamond based processor.

In fact it was a diamond based, optical processor...

Hmm... Things that make you go hmm...

Oh, for people who don't know, 'McGuffin' was Alfred Hitchcock's name for a central plot device around which everything in the story rotated.

And for people who don't know who Alfred Hitchcock was, he was a famous movie director.

Its not easy getting old. There's all this common 'shared reference' shit to worry about losing.

Re:Great idea

[An ominous Cow art]

We're heading to Venus, and still we stand tall, because maybe they've seen us, and welcome us all. Though I would think that would be an ESA mission, and not a NASA one...