ARM has solidified its position today as master of the mobile processor universe, announcing a deal with TSMC that will take smartphone chips all the way down to a 20nm process. That means: faster, better, more efficient. More »
Scientists have developed a new type of semiconductor structure – using microscopic crystals called magnetic quantum dots – that could more than double current hard drive storage capacity. That’s just for starters. More »
It may look all innocent, but this little logic circuit is made from organic molecules that lined themselves up to form 300 transistors, without the need for machine production. This kind of chip-in-a-test-tube approach to creating semiconductors, demonstrated as effective for the first time by Philips Research, could cause a big leap towards cheaper, more flexible electronics—in a word, to quote The Graduate, “plastics.”
With the accidental discovery of “black silicon,” Harvard physicists may have very well changed the digital photography, solar power and night vision industries forever. What is black silicon, you say? Well, it’s just as it sounds. Black silicon. It’s what this revolutionary new material does that’s important, starting with light sensitivity. Early indications show black silicon is 100 to 500 times more sensitive to light than a traditional silicon wafer.
We all owe a lot to this place. The birth of the world’s first silicon chip happened here, and now, it’s a nice place to pick up some fresh produce. Bits has a great history of the site–now known as the Fiesta Super Market at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View (home also to the big G). It used to be the world’s first semiconductor lab, established by the American physicist William Shockley and where the founders of Fairchild and Intel got their chops. But now? Just a couple of marks on the sidewalk indicate its past, among all the fine fruits and veggies.
The scientific community has been praising graphene as some sort of miracle material for years now–even going so far as to say that it could eventually replace silicon. Well, graphene can now add another statistic to its impressive resume now that researchers have confirmed it as the strongest material ever tested.
Straight out of IBM’s Zurich R&D labs are these concepts for semiconductor chips that are stacked on top of eachother and allow enough space in between for water cooling. Developed jointly with the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, the ’3D’ stacking of these chips not only uses less space and allows for greater speed, but the water cooling technique could potentially take the generated heat and reuse it for other purposes. IBM says the water cooling structure is as thin as 50 microns and equal in complexity to the system of nerves and blood vessels in the human brain. Crazy stuff.[IBM via TG Daily via Engadget]
Japanese semiconductor maker Rohm is looking to vanquish vampire power, the energy wasted by tech on stand-by, with its new LSI circuits. The circuits consume no electricity even when in stand-by mode, allowing for a quick power up without the power drain. Considering that roughly 10% of a house’s energy bill goes to these silent suckers, Rohm’s circuits could save money and the planet at the same time.
Just the other day we were banging on about graphene, the new “wonder material” based on graphite, and now a British team has used it to craft the world’s smallest transistor. It’s just one atom deep and ten wide, and we don’t need to tell you that that’s teeny. In fact, it’s more than three times smaller than the 32nm transistors at the cutting edge of silicon-based microelectronics: so it looks like Gordon Moore’s law of transistor shrinkage has a bit of life in it yet.
Physicists at the University of Maryland have demonstrated that graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of graphite, has a greater ability to conduct electricity than any other known material at room temperature. In fact, electrons can travel up to 100 times faster in graphine than silicon, making it a likely candidate to replace it as a semiconductor material in devices like computer chips and sensors.
