The missing switch: High-performance monolithic graphene transistors created

linky

W00t! Faster computers here we come!

As you probably know by now, graphene has a long and wonderful list of desirable properties, including being the most conductive material yet discovered. In theory, according to early demos from the likes of IBM and UCLA, graphene transistors should be capable of switching at speeds between 100GHz and a few terahertz. The problem is, graphene doesn’t have a bandgap — an innate ability to switch on and off, depending on the voltage; it isn’t a natural semiconductor, like silicon — and so it is proving very hard to build transistors out of the stuff. Until now!

I tried reading the following paper on this. However it's way over my head.
linky

But from what I can get out of it they can make faster computers.
Very cool.

so super conducting properties at -53 degrees, did i read that right, at least i think that is what they are saying.
I can't wait to see what this technology will produce, it has so many applications, the mind boggles at the possibilities.

Makes you wonder how long the military has had these super conducting switches. I remember watching the movie Hunt for Red October, there's a scene where the soviet officer is briefing the captain of the boat about sabotage on the Superconductors. At the time I was a kid and dismissed it as them just trying to throw something high tech into the mix to make the Submarine seem more incredible. Looking back on it. I bet a lot of nations have had applicable semiconductor tech for a while now and it's just finally getting out to the civilian sectors.

But either way it makes the future seem a little brighter. Faster computers for sure.

reply to post by BASSPLYR


the red october sported a caterpiller drive.
electromagnetic propulsion.

reply to post by BASSPLYR


That had to do with the magnetohydrodynamic propulsion that was the "big thing" at the time

cool thread!!! S&F!

What the hell would we do with a 100 ghz processor, even the lower end of the scale the possibilities are massive, especially for GPU's, in fact i bet they become a thing of the past a single 3d processor with 1-6 terrabytes of on board ram and a processing speed of 100ghz would manage everything in one package.

reply to post by The X


They used to ask the same question about why in the world we'd need a hard drive or RAM larger than a few kb

WOw just wow...

Hopefully they can figure out how to make graphene transistors cheap and soon. That would give us a major legup in the never ending need for more processing power. In addition though the super conducting temperature sounds pretty reasonable which means we could open the door to a bunch of other technologies.

Originally posted by The X
What the hell would we do with a 100 ghz processor, even the lower end of the scale the possibilities are massive, especially for GPU's, in fact i bet they become a thing of the past a single 3d processor with 1-6 terrabytes of on board ram and a processing speed of 100ghz would manage everything in one package.

Real time 3D rendering come to mind.
And you could create a 3D movie in a few minutes with something that powerful.

Converting video would take a few seconds instead of hours.

The implications are massive.

Yeah also imagine what you could do with mobile applications.... make processors a third the size or less that are a hundred times as powerful as anything else on the market and use about the same or less power!

And then there's UAV technology and etc all of which could benefit massively from a technology like this.

Originally posted by roguetechie
Yeah also imagine what you could do with mobile applications.... make processors a third the size or less that are a hundred times as powerful as anything else on the market and use about the same or less power!

And then there's UAV technology and etc all of which could benefit massively from a technology like this.

The military applications must be giving some generals in the pentagon woodies.
I wonder if this technology would enable apple to build a "LifePod" everything you ever did, saw, experienced, recorded onto a machine that does everything you could ever want it to, from monitoring your bio-senses and sampling your pheromones, analysing your keytones, for signs of cancer or other diseases, to having a "Living" artificial synaptic "brain" that would do things like, turn on the lights at your house as you approached, if it overhears you talking to your wife about going somewhere for dinner, it calls and makes reservation, all in something the size of an ipod.


And now how long before in a laboratory somewhere we hear "Ok brian turn it on, and we will have the quantum processing power of all the atoms in the universe".

I also have the feeling that room temperature superconductivity will be discovered by accident when racing cars become electric, somebody will try something totally by chance while working on the car in a garage, and hey presto, a very good season for them.

yeah if the racing community could ever pull it's head out of it's dash.... right now the way racing leagues spec out every possible aspect of the cars limits technical advancement by race teams.

What we need is a new open class racing league or leagues where technical advancement is not just encouraged but is basically mandatory.... If you want to win you've got to push the envelope sort of leagues.

Anyway yeah graphene transistors will push out Moore's law even further into the future once we reach the limits of silicon.

What I"m really interested in though is someone coming up with a technology to make graphene on the cheap. That is the key to opening up vast new vistas of technological growth. Right now graphene is relatively expensive to make, until that changes we won't see the real benefits of a carbon based economy.

reply to post by grey580


Yeah it had a MHD propulsion system. I just thought it was neat that they were mentioning superconductors in the movie in relation to the MHD.

Either way cool thread! THis technological development does have massive implications.

iirc, a single silicon transistor can turn on and off at rates above 100 billion times per second. But it's not possible to make an actual computer processor run at those speeds due to scaling difficulties become apparent at around 3.5 GHz when making a stable, working chip that has over a billion transistors on it.

Originally posted by roguetechie
WOw just wow...

Hopefully they can figure out how to make graphene transistors cheap and soon. That would give us a major legup in the never ending need for more processing power. In addition though the super conducting temperature sounds pretty reasonable which means we could open the door to a bunch of other technologies.

Ask and you shall receive.
www.bbc.co.uk...

They just found a new way to make them that makes graphene a good semiconductor for transistors.

Very nice....

I still hope to see the price of graphene plummet in the next few years when some whiz kid chemist has the light bulb moment and figures out how to make it in job lots. That's when I"ll get excited.