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Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

economist.com

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Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

#31

Post by _carbyau_ »

christkv wrote: post #26
hengheng wrote: post #24

EUV has always been about achieving high enough power to be economically viable. It was never about making chips at any cost. I remember reading the tinfoil hat theory about three-letter agencies making low-quantity high-cost chips at incredible process sizes in order to break encryption. I doubt that's still as viable today as it was before leakage currents started dominating, but it was an impressively plausible th…

Where is my superconductor based CPUs preferably at room temperature.

Hell, even liquid nitrogen temperatures are fine. More hassle than you'd want in your pocket but yearly running costs wouldn't be too bad for most businesses.

Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

#32

Post by smallmancontrov »

hengheng wrote: post #24

EUV has always been about achieving high enough power to be economically viable. It was never about making chips at any cost. I remember reading the tinfoil hat theory about three-letter agencies making low-quantity high-cost chips at incredible process sizes in order to break encryption. I doubt that's still as viable today as it was before leakage currents started dominating, but it was an impressively plausible th…

Back in the day, HP advertised that the distributed amplifiers in their 26.5 and 50 GHz equipment were made with e-beams, but the process size wasn't anything special, certainly not by today's standards. I'm not really sure what drove the decision.

Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

#34

Post by fooker »

artemonster wrote: post #29
hengheng wrote: post #24

EUV has always been about achieving high enough power to be economically viable. It was never about making chips at any cost. I remember reading the tinfoil hat theory about three-letter agencies making low-quantity high-cost chips at incredible process sizes in order to break encryption. I doubt that's still as viable today as it was before leakage currents started dominating, but it was an impressively plausible th…

that tinfoil hat theory, just as basically all of them, can only be produced by people that have absolutely zero understanding of the topic. The amount of challenges that industry has faced during the relatively fast progress through nodes is just non skippable, as there were so many things to be discovered through very expensive and long brute force (just one example: high k dielectrics)

No, you can absolutely make specialized chips that are orders of magnitude better than the commercial state of the art if you don't care about mass production or operational costs.

I can bet there are superconductor/photonics/topologically different/strange memory/smaller process size prototypes around.

Right now we are getting to the limits of transistor sizes, but even a couple of years ago experimental prototypes of smaller process size were developed years before mass production.

Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

#35

Post by fooker »

adastra22 wrote: post #28
kev009 wrote: post #11

Is the idea that this will scale? You can already build down to the atomic level with scanning tunneling microscopy (thanks IBM).

No, we cannot. IBM moved neutral atoms around on an inert surface. No one has demonstrated building covalent structures (or metallic, or ionic for that matter). My startup is trying to do this, and it is a fiendishly hard problem.

Why though?

Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

#36

Post by nick3443 »

christkv wrote: post #26
hengheng wrote: post #24

EUV has always been about achieving high enough power to be economically viable. It was never about making chips at any cost. I remember reading the tinfoil hat theory about three-letter agencies making low-quantity high-cost chips at incredible process sizes in order to break encryption. I doubt that's still as viable today as it was before leakage currents started dominating, but it was an impressively plausible th…

Where is my superconductor based CPUs preferably at room temperature.

Does a superconducting semiconductor even make sense philosophically?

Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

#37

Post by artemonster »

fooker wrote: post #34
artemonster wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that tinfoil hat theory, just as basically all of them, can only be produced by people that have absolutely zero understanding of the topic. The amount of challenges that industry has faced during the relatively fast progress through nodes is just non skippable, as there were so many things to be discovered through very expensive and long brute force (just one example: high k dielectrics)

No, you can absolutely make specialized chips that are orders of magnitude better than the commercial state of the art if you don't care about mass production or operational costs. I can bet there are superconductor/photonics/topologically different/strange memory/smaller process size prototypes around. Right now we are getting to the limits of transistor sizes, but even a couple of years ago experimental prototypes…

where you get this nonsense? I am from semicon industry, so please, sources for the claim "orders of magnitude better"

Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

#38

Post by lightedman »

fooker wrote: post #35
adastra22 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we cannot. IBM moved neutral atoms around on an inert surface. No one has demonstrated building covalent structures (or metallic, or ionic for that matter). My startup is trying to do this, and it is a fiendishly hard problem.

Why though?

Things don't like to move once they're atomically-stuck together. Getting them to stick is another issue altogether. Doing so in reliable locations repeatedly at scale? Good luck.

Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator

#39

Post by sevensor »

itishappy wrote: post #16
kev009 wrote: post #11

Is the idea that this will scale? You can already build down to the atomic level with scanning tunneling microscopy (thanks IBM).

Yes, electron-beam lithography is fantastic but also fantastically slow. Sorta like building a Lego model brick by brick vs layer by layer. It's still used for reticle fabrication and repair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron-beam_lithography Edit: Confused SEMs and STMs, but the principle described above applies to both.

Where the reticle is worth patterning expensively because it gets used in so many subsequent exposures using light rather than electrons.
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