
IBM Scientists Find New Way to Shrink Transistors - sew
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/science/ibm-scientists-find-new-way-to-shrink-transistors.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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heydenberk
> By simply swapping carbon nanotube transistors for conventional ones in a >
> simulated IBM microprocessor, they were able to increase speeds by a factor
> > of seven or, alternatively, achieve power savings almost as significant,
> said > Wilfried Haensch, an IBM physicist who is a member of the research
> group.

In technology, one often comes across the use of the word "simply" to refer to
something that's actually quite complicate (see the Druid docs[0]) but this is
quite a doozy.

[0]
[http://cse.google.com/cse?cx=004325268462231820898:e4htgtatb...](http://cse.google.com/cse?cx=004325268462231820898:e4htgtatbkg&q=simply&oq=simply&gs_l=partner.3...3453.4069.0.4267.6.6.0.0.0.0.149.586.4j2.6.0.gsnos,n%3D13...0.620j84630j6..1ac.1.25.partner..6.0.0.06_GQRLTiaE#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=simply&gsc.page=1)

~~~
VanillaCafe
It's crazy to think that a major breakthrough like this with a factor of seven
increase in transistor density is little more than four years of progress as
measured by Moore's Law.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> It's crazy to think that a major breakthrough like this with a factor of
> seven increase in transistor density is little more than four years of
> progress as measured by Moore's Law.

In a single step, by switching to an experimental new process. It seems likely
that, if that process pans out, it'll then get years of extensive refinement
to improve both yield and density.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I don't know about that. They were talking about line widths of 40 atoms.
Another four years (factor of seven improvement) takes you to 6 atoms; another
four years (factor of 7 improvement) takes you to one atom. At that point
you're not talking about a "carbon nanotube" any longer - it's just a row of
carbon atoms, and you _still_ can't improve it any further.

I mean, yes, there will be process improvements. The article talked about 28
atoms as the next step. But there are fundamental limits, and they aren't very
far away...

(I could be overstating the case here, in that transistor density may scale as
the square of the line width, rather than linearly with it. The point about
fundamental limits still stands, however.)

~~~
IanCal
There will always be a hard limit, but one thing I could see us looking back
on and finding weird is that we have a single layer of transistors. If we
could build more complex 3D structures I'd expect we could see vast
improvements.

Not part of Moore's Law but there are also

1\. Significant storage improvements, and bringing the storage closer to the
processing (or the other way around) which massively improves the overall
speed.

2\. Better chip design. Not knocking the current designers, but it'd be
foolish to assume we have the theoretical optimum chip designs.

3\. Cost. Sure, you're not going to improve every use case but what if my
motherboard was just a big layer of cpus with non-volatile huge caches because
it cost pennies? _Particularly_ when we hit some larger limits, we'd be likely
to see that current best design being produced by lots of people and getting
cheaper and cheaper.

Along with 3. comes more custom designed chips. If we can get the cost of
design and fabrication down, we can speed things up by having a bunch of chips
for specific functions.

~~~
chopin
Afaik the main problem with 3D structures is heat dissipation, which limits
this approach somewhat. But nanotubes might help with this as well maybe.

~~~
ajuc
Maybe we should copy the brain design? Fold it and put cooling liquid around?

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0xcde4c3db
The real challenge with CNTFETs is mass production. Without that, the roadmap
doesn't budge.

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jostmey
The space smallest space between chemical synapses is ~20nm. It helps put the
size of these transistors in perspective.

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mrdrozdov
Coming out in 2016. Moore's Law. The suspense movie with a surprise twist that
you never saw coming.

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davidaa
I feel like this headline could read "Moore's Law To Be Kept Alive For
Slightly Longer".

