41–50 of 61 posts
Philae is controlled by 2 RTX2010 CPUs (hot red), further 8 control the Experiments. 13 CPUs (10* RTX2010, 1* ADSP-21020, 2* 80C3x) in total. © https://twitter.com/philae2014/status/427842417920712704
Hah, an old friend. A company I worked with had a Novix in 1986/1987 for prototyping purposes (early days number plate recognition system). Before we got it we had to sign an unreasonable amount of paper. Rumor had it this is the chip powering the Tomahawk cruisemissile.
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>Nice to see this neat-but-underappreciated architecture in the news. It's already appreciated. Let me recall here the 'scientist' character (A&B Srugatsky) who explains the World as a huge inertial mass to the good or evil in the same. Tertium non datur it is a principle of our mind sometimes used in computers.
edit: Strugatsky. hi ±HN.
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Theoretically you can make integrated circuit with any semiconductor, but I don't know if anyone has been brave enough to try it. The smallest integrated circuit is a diode, it has 1/2 transistors :). OK, a diode is not actually an integrated circuit, but if you can use a material to make a diode, you probably can use the same material to make an integrated circuit with enough money, time and ingenuity. Some of the d…
I know that, but I don't think every material has the interesting properties that Si does for image sensors , i.e. it needs to basically turn photons of the right wavelength range into electrons.
Other users have answered the question, but I'd like to add a little more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_circuit#LED_as_light_sensor
> As a photodiode, an LED is sensitive to wavelengths equal to or shorter than the predominant wavelength it emits. For example, a green LED is sensitive to blue light and to some green light, but not to yellow or red light.
If you want to measure the light of all visible wavelength, you must use a semiconductor with a low band gap, for example the named in the other comments: Germanium, Silicon or Gallium Arsenide
It's interesting to read the table in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_materials... but it's important to sort it by band gap fist, o you an compare the applications of semiconductor with a similar band gap.
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Wouldn't work for all applications, tough, if I'm not mistaken, as you specifically need Silicon for imaging chips (CCD/CMOS). Or is that nonsense?
Theoretically you can make integrated circuit with any semiconductor, but I don't know if anyone has been brave enough to try it. The smallest integrated circuit is a diode, it has 1/2 transistors :). OK, a diode is not actually an integrated circuit, but if you can use a material to make a diode, you probably can use the same material to make an integrated circuit with enough money, time and ingenuity. Some of the d…
So nearly 2 orders of magnitude price difference. In 1998 admittedly, but still. (Someone should come up with a better example for the Wikipedia article)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't work for all applications, tough, if I'm not mistaken, as you specifically need Silicon for imaging chips (CCD/CMOS). Or is that nonsense?
Why would you need silicon for that? Even if it were the only process we use now (which it isn't. As a simple example, Germanium-based photo diodes do exist), materials research could conceivably produce other materials that work, too. There are even more exotic examples to think of. Eyes turn light into electricity without (AFAIK) Silicon. Maybe part of that physics/chemistry can be practically used elsewhere?
Correct. A photon hits a chromophore bound to an opsin protein, and flips the chirality of the chromophore from 11-cis to all-trans, which changes the structure of the opsin protein, which starts the cascade of activity leading to sight. We could definitely use chemical detectors to take advantage of this or a similar process.
Hah, an old friend. A company I worked with had a Novix in 1986/1987 for prototyping purposes (early days number plate recognition system). Before we got it we had to sign an unreasonable amount of paper. Rumor had it this is the chip powering the Tomahawk cruisemissile.
Listed but unfortunately not stocked: http://www.mouser.tw/Search/Refine.aspx?Keyword=RTX2010
So if HN has any questions, this is a good time to ask them. The hangout is here: