IBM Reports Carbon Nanotube Chip Breakthrough 73
First time accepted submitter yawaramin writes "IBM has apparently made a breakthrough in arranging carbon nanotubes into the logic gates necessary to make a chip. This should help miniaturize and speed up processors beyond what today's silicon-based technologies are capable of. The article notes though that perfecting the carbon nanotube technology could take up the rest of this decade."
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Slashdot effect seems to have killed this server temporarily -- HOLD OFF A FEW HOURS, FOLKS!
Re:citation? (Score:5, Informative)
There's some info here on Nature but it's pay walled
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2012.189.html [nature.com]
There's some additional info in a pdf from the same site here
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nnano.2012.189-s1.pdf [nature.com]
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If it's paywalled, don't even fucking bother to link it, most of us will naturally avoid the link.
If you can't find a non-paywalled version, then don't bother at all.
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8, 5, 2.
I'm not giving you units, though.
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In order - Kilowatt-hours, decahertz, and kiloFLOPS.
Trying to hide the dismal performance of your company product? Perhaps you should be a bit more forthcoming, 'lest your NDA kill your company with your bullshit answer.
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Weeks, zettahertz, and petaflops.
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power = energy, oh anonymous high school dropout.
kWh is power rate over time.
Please come back when you hold a certification or license to do electrical work.
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Yes.
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Re:Apparently? (Score:5, Funny)
"IBM has apparently made a breakthrough..." They either have or haven't made breakthrough. "Apparently" doesn't really cut it I'm sorry
Well, at such a small scale, everything is controlled by quantum mechanics. Oh, excuse me: everything at such small scale may or may not controlled by quantum mechanics.
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This is maybe a post. Maybe by me. Could be a good post ... or a bad.
(This was 3 quantbits.)
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everything at such small scale may and may not controlled by quantum mechanics.
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"IBM has apparently made a breakthrough..." They either have or haven't made breakthrough. "Apparently" doesn't really cut it I'm sorry.
It's not always immediately known if something will be a major breakthrough or not. If and when these chips come to market, we'll be able to look back and decide where the breakthroughs were.
How refreshing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How refreshing (Score:5, Insightful)
Moderate you up or just type I agree? Too important to just mod, you're bang on point. After using the internet for over 15 years, definitely this is the case with tech articles. I think you could probably count the technological _huge_ leaps in the last 20 years on a single hand in regards to PC parts.
3D GPU stuff like 3DFX cards
SSD's
Ability to burn optical media
High speed internet
Flat panel displays
As for CPU speed increases, memory size increases, memory bandwidth increases, disk storage size increases - ALL of these have been slowly eeked out at a slow pace to keep the money flowing.
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SSD's are not revolutionary. They are older than spinning magnetic disks, it just took them a lot longer to increase in speed and capacity compared to the first few generations of magnetic disks.
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... in the last 20 years ...
Ability to burn optical media
Sorry, but this didn't happen in the last 20 years. I bought my first CD-R writer in the fall of 1991 (21 years ago), and I think that they were on the market for about a year before that. If I recall correctly, the price was just under $8000.
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And how is a flat panel display a "huge" technological leap? Especially with LCD latency issues, LCD looks more like a downgrade, albeit a cheaper than CRT one.
"Ability to burn optical media" is as revolutionary as "buggy whip manufacture". I burn, on average, a disk or two per YEAR. At least you could have gone for USB thumb drives.
"High speed internet" is so "huge" a leap, it is not even needed for th
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You aren't really logical at all. SSD and HD (as in spinning media) are different technologies, with the former allowing for much greater speeds of data access. SATA vs ATA [sic] is just a change in interface. Both SSD and HDD can use the either, though I am not aware of any SSDs using (P)ATA.
LCD panels allow for smaller displays. They use less energy. You can fit one anywhere. Today's phones have better resolution than the desktop of 10 years ago. Try that with a CRT.
Being able to burn optical media
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I don't know. SATA vs ATA seems analagous to SSD vs HDD to me...
(PS I don't know why you wrote sic after ATA, since ATA was its original name.)
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No. There was nothing revolutionary about this. The progress was slow-and-steady like everything else.
You could already do fully-featured real-time 3D rendering for years before 3DFX cards were even conceived, and the price came down iteratively.
At first the only source for real-time 3D was government contractors with supercomputers. But this performance had a price (usually a million+)
Then the cost was reduced to the "thousands of dollars" over the next few years for arcades
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Finally, Area 51 Tech being released. Figuring out how clever aliens placed those carbon molecules is the tricky bit.
Maybe doping the ends with magnetic substance, magnetising, gluing them in place, then using acid or alien spit to wash away the metallic positioners, then a laser to burn traces between the upright and aligned fibers.
Borrow from nature and use a jig to place parts like making proteins.
--
Chief, the ram is left handed and the fpga is right handed. What shall we do?
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Most stories I see say that [insert favourite research here] will be ready for commercial production within five years. Finally, somebody's being honest and saying it won't be ready before the end of this decade.
Which is a shame, because we will need those powerful computers to crack the secret to controlled nuclear fusion, which, *after* getting those computers, will only be twenty years away!
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It's the marketing types, the reporters, and the audience of the news that demand the 5 year
Perfect give (Score:2)
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URL for the IBM research paper and press release (Score:5, Informative)
The IBM press release is available at http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/39250.wss [ibm.com]
I recommend reading the comments on the New York Times article. My favorite comment so far is:
MC - NYC
The Singularity edges closer...
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Re:URL for the IBM research paper and press releas (Score:4, Informative)
article text:
Carbon nanotubes have potential in the development of high-
speed and power-efficient logic applications1–7. However, for
such technologies to be viable, a high density of semiconduct-
ing nanotubes must be placed at precise locations on a sub-
strate. Here, we show that ion-exchange chemistry can be
used to fabricate arrays of individually positioned carbon nano-
tubes with a density as high as 1 3 109cm22—two orders of
magnitude higher than previous reports8,9. With this approach,
we assembled a high density of carbon-nanotube transistors in
a conventional semiconductor fabrication line and then electri-
cally tested more than 10,000 devices in a single chip. The
ability to characterize such large distributions of nanotube
devices is crucial for analysing transistor performance, yield
and semiconducting nanotube purity.
The precise placement of carbon nanotubes on a substrate typi-
cally involves one of three techniques: the direct growth of nano-
tubes on a substrate10,11, the transfer of nanotubes from a ‘growth’
substrate to a device substrate5,6, or the deposition of nanotubes
from solution onto a device substrate8,9,12–18. Because nanotubes
can be metallic or semiconducting, a further consideration for
high-performance digital logic is the degree to which metallic nano-
tubes can be eliminated. Although approaches for enriching sub-
strate-supported semiconducting nanotubes during or after
synthesis have been demonstrated19,20, currently the most effective
techniques involve processing the nanotubes in solution21.
One promising approach for placing solution-based nanotubes is
to selectively position them on a specific substrate by chemically
functionalizing the nanotubes or the substrate14–18. This typically
involves using a patterned surface (such as SiO2/HfO2) such that
nanotubes deposited from solution adhere only to one part of the
pattern (the HfO2, for example). Key metrics for determining
the efficacy of the deposition are the density of individually
placed nanotubes, which must exceed 1 × 1010cm22, with a pitch
smaller than 10 nm for high-performance logic6,7, and the selectiv-
ity, which is the degree to which adsorption takes place only on the
pattern of interest. In general, however, solution-based approaches
that result in high density exhibit poor selectivity14,16, and those
that offer high selectivity have low density17,18.
We have developed a selective placement method based on ion
exchange between a functional surface monolayer and surfactant-
wrapped carbon nanotubes in aqueous solution. Strong electrostatic
interaction between the surface monolayer and the nanotube surfac-
tant leads to the placement of individual nanotubes with excellent
selectivity and a density of 1 × 109cm22. Furthermore, the
approach is compatible with the most efficient solution-based sep-
aration schemes21, allowing wafer-scale integration using highly
purified carbon nanotubes.
Our nanotube placement using an ion-exchange technique
is illustrated in Fig. 1a. The surface monolayer is formed from
4-(N-hydroxycarboxamido)-1-methylpyridinium iodide (NMPI)
molecules, which were synthesized from commercially available
methyl isonicotinate (see Methods). The monolayer contains a
hydroxamic acid end group that is known to self-assemble on
metal oxide surfaces, but not on SiO2(refs17,18,22). We selectively
self-assembled NMPI on HfO2regions of a patterned SiO2/HfO2
surface. The functionalized surface was then placed in an aqueous
solution of carbon nanotubes. Solubility of the nanotubes was
achieved using an anionic surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulphate,
SDS). Excess surfactant in the solution was removed by dialysis.
The anion of NMPI (that is, iodide) is exchanged with the
anionic surfactant wrapped around the nanotubes, leading to a
strong coulombic attraction between the negatively ch
Thank you! (Score:2)
Thank you!
I don't know how many times I've wanted to read a paper mentioned here that's essentially unavailable.
I think your method of cut/paste the text strikes a good compromise between giving out the information and preventing unauthorized copy. The information is available to motivated readers, but can't easily dilute the journal's copyright. A truly interested reader could then pay for the actual article from the Journal.
Keep up the good work, whoever you are.
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I think your method of cut/paste the text strikes a good compromise between giving out the information and preventing unauthorized copy.
You seriously don't think that copying and pasting the whole text of a work constitutes copyright infringement?
I'm not a fan of paywalls for research papers, but you can't just magic them away.
Ars Technica (Score:5, Informative)
Ars also has a piece on this, here. [arstechnica.com]
It's a small breakthrough (Score:1)
of interconnected tubes
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But not nano?
premature optimization postponed (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, no. Micro-architecture could continue to evolve without die shrinks (likely toward a proliferation of specialized units) and software could also evolve. Probably both for a decade or so, before the shrink stall becomes a fed stall. A feature of Moore's Law rarely expressed is that software lags architecture, and architecture lags die size.
I realized a long time ago that if I could gain a 50% speed increase by rewriting a critical application loop in assembly language, it generally wasn't worth the bother. The next processor architecture would mess up you clever clock-count calculations. The effort was almost always better invested in satisfying feature demand as PCs became more capable. Not only does the architectures improve, but so does the cleverness of your compiler (not including your hand-polished asm). If the software people actually knew that die shrinks were a thing of the past, it would make sense to be more aggressive in the choice of algorithms and execution regimes. They might even be well paid to indulge in premature optimizations postponed, since this would become the main avenue to sustaining performance gains.
There might be more pressure to bet on the right horse, which could thin the herd. Competence gradients tend to have this effect.
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If and when we hit a wall on hardware speed, then we can spend the
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There's a difference between premature optimization and software bloat. I can see absolutely no reason one program should take up 2+ orders of magnitude more resources than a competing product with 90% of the features.
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Do you have any evidence of IBM doing this? Ever?
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I am not about to search for IBMs patents and then tell you where there are used, that is just pointless. But you would have to be a complete idiot to think that there is nothing patented in their new z12 mainframes, or Power 7 systems, or the new Pure Systems stuff. Then there are the chips themselves which no doubt have many patented things (including manufacturing processes). And their systems manufacturing processes probably have patented elements. Then of course there is their software.
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Can we get a -1 : Batshit insane(ly jealous)?
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Perhaps not, but I CERTAINLY remember what happened to the Peanut in order to satisfy the Displaywriter people. Semantically there is little difference to me who the gatekeepers who restrict development actually call themselves... when the result is suppression of the fruits of applied technology.
Another amazing breakthrough from IBM... (Score:1)