American scientists have built a carbon microchip that is far more efficient than the ones we have today.
You may have heard of "Silicon Valley". An area south of San Francisco where the mastodon Apple, Facebook and Google belong.
The area got its name in its time because the companies all depend on the element silicon. Without silicon, we wouldn't have the lightning fast microchips that sit in everything from smartphones, cars, TVs and to laptops today.
But it may well be that the area needs to change its name in the future.
Scientists from MIT have built a computer using carbon instead of silicon.
That's what they write in the acclaimed journal Nature .
This is the first time an advanced processor has been built using so-called carbon nanotubes, and the tubes have a huge potential for future electronics development.
According to Jesper Nygård, a researcher in carbon nanotubes in electronics at the University of Copenhagen, the results of the American scientists are impressive.
- This is the first time anyone has built a computer with so many carbon nanotube transistors. As many as 14,000 have been stuffed into the chip, he says, but says:
- But that said, it is equivalent to having built an old-fashioned black-and-white television. So the chip is not more advanced. By comparison, the processors that sit in our laptops have 10 billion transistors, he says.
Development cannot continue
So, although the researchers have not built a carbon microchip that can compare with those of silicon, the result is nevertheless interesting.
The limit on how many silicon transistors we can put together on a chip is about to be reached, explains Jesper Nygård.
- When you have chips with 50 billion transistors, we are down to a size where there are few atoms that separate the individual transistors. And when it gets so small, the electrons start to behave differently. They may find themselves jumping through the transistors, even if they are closed, he says.
The electronics industry is therefore looking for a new material to make transistors. A material that is more energy efficient. And this is where carbon comes into the picture.
According to the researchers themselves, these transistors are built of carbon nanotubes namely 10 times more energy efficient than those of silicon. And there are many advantages in that, explains Jesper Nygård.
- This means that you can make chips that use a tenth of the energy they use today. And that means you can put the transistors even closer, he says.
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You may have heard of "Silicon Valley". An area south of San Francisco where the mastodon Apple, Facebook and Google belong.
The area got its name in its time because the companies all depend on the element silicon. Without silicon, we wouldn't have the lightning fast microchips that sit in everything from smartphones, cars, TVs and to laptops today.
But it may well be that the area needs to change its name in the future.
Scientists from MIT have built a computer using carbon instead of silicon.
That's what they write in the acclaimed journal Nature .
This is the first time an advanced processor has been built using so-called carbon nanotubes, and the tubes have a huge potential for future electronics development.
According to Jesper Nygård, a researcher in carbon nanotubes in electronics at the University of Copenhagen, the results of the American scientists are impressive.
- This is the first time anyone has built a computer with so many carbon nanotube transistors. As many as 14,000 have been stuffed into the chip, he says, but says:
- But that said, it is equivalent to having built an old-fashioned black-and-white television. So the chip is not more advanced. By comparison, the processors that sit in our laptops have 10 billion transistors, he says.
Development cannot continue
So, although the researchers have not built a carbon microchip that can compare with those of silicon, the result is nevertheless interesting.
The limit on how many silicon transistors we can put together on a chip is about to be reached, explains Jesper Nygård.
- When you have chips with 50 billion transistors, we are down to a size where there are few atoms that separate the individual transistors. And when it gets so small, the electrons start to behave differently. They may find themselves jumping through the transistors, even if they are closed, he says.
The electronics industry is therefore looking for a new material to make transistors. A material that is more energy efficient. And this is where carbon comes into the picture.
According to the researchers themselves, these transistors are built of carbon nanotubes namely 10 times more energy efficient than those of silicon. And there are many advantages in that, explains Jesper Nygård.
- This means that you can make chips that use a tenth of the energy they use today. And that means you can put the transistors even closer, he says.
Read more
