Diamond CPUs - not too far off...

Very interesting article on Wired - Flawless Diamonds are now being produced. They've also been able to dope the diamond crystals to form both P-type and, just recently, N-type crystals (needed to form a semiconductor junction). It will only be a few years before they can make wafers large enough for efficient mass production of chips.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html

Intel:

"It takes us about 10 years to evaluate a new material. We have a lot of investment in silicon. We're not about to abandon that."

Click to expand...

Perhaps AMD won't be so reluctant...


Did a search, but only came up with a few posts about using diamond for cooling. Of course, with the prospect of flawless Diamionds being supposedly readily available in a few years, I'm sure there will be some quite interesing cooling solutions.

On a similar note, wouldn't the ability to produce flawless diamonds completely destroy the diamond market?

Not that that's a bad thing for us guys though. Stupid wedding rings might actually drop to below the price of a computer then.

No, it won't destroy the diamond market. It could even potentially make the prices higher. A great example of how this happens is the pearl. Most pearls you see now are cultured pearls. They are real pearls, but they turn the oysters over on a regular basis to ensure the uniform roundness of the pearl. When this discovery was made, pearl prices went up. Yes, cultured pearls were cheaper, but real pearls went up in value. Why? Because to have round "natural' pearls became even more desirable amongst those that buy such things. (Of course, now pearls aren't very valuable at all.)

The same will be true of diamonds too. First, while the initial market may be for gems, the real application of this will be in industrial diamonds. The fact that it is man-made will devalue it in the first place. The reality is that diamonds, even high clarity ones (with the possible exception of some of the colored ones), are not rare at all. DeBeers sits on a huge stock-pile of them. They release only a small percentage of those that are actually mined. They do this to artificially inflate the market. Even if people are willing to "flock" to synthetics it still won't have much effect on the industry. They will want to keep the same high profit margins. Also, the stockpile that DeBeers has is so large that they could use it to flood the market with real diamonds that are cheaper than the cost of the synthetics. They could drive the companies making them out of business and then resume the higher price. DeBeers has used this tactic several times to stop companies that find new mines in different areas of the world. They also use another tactic where they refuse to do business with merchants that use the new companies. When your choice is DeBeers or the upstart company, you pick DeBeers because you'd like to have your doors open next year.

Not to say that it can't happen, but I think it's unlikely.

The guy who tested the synth diamonds said the one company's diamonds were too perfect. I'm guessing theres a chance of prices going higher due to people wanting the most flawless diamond they can get their hands on, similar to the cultured pearl market.

Both companies seem focused on the chip market in the long term view though, so the jewelry market would just be for initial revenue.

Is it just me, or is Wired always running articles on things that are 20 years or more away? Aren't they always on the bleeding edge, and losing their sanity?

Krusty said:

On a similar note, wouldn't the ability to produce flawless diamonds completely destroy the diamond market?

Not that that's a bad thing for us guys though. Stupid wedding rings might actually drop to below the price of a computer then.

Click to expand...

Considering that the world diamond market is run by a few people and is a COMPLETE monopoly I could care less.

I've always understood that man made gems have a different crystal structure that can be identified under magnification. One supposedly looks like a spider web and the other doesn't

You should read the whole article. It says that there is one way of making diamonds that are detectable with some sort of light refraction test, but there is another way that can only identified as man made because it has no flaws whatsoever, which wouldn't happen in nature.

I actually checked up on myself and that magnification test is only used with rubys and emeralds. Its an old article ( I saved it because I thought it was interesting ) so its probably out of date and does not apply to the newer stuff

That's a really interesting article! What amazes me is the P-N doping they managed. Diamond is an insulator, and so doping it to P-type or N-type must have been quite difficult. But when they did it... That's just awesome.

Wonder if 10 years from now, Intel will be releasing a 'Diamond Series'
JigPu

JigPu said:

That's a really interesting article! What amazes me is the P-N doping they managed. Diamond is an insulator, and so doping it to P-type or N-type must have been quite difficult. But when they did it... That's just awesome.

Wonder if 10 years from now, Intel will be releasing a 'Diamond Series'
JigPu

Click to expand...

I don't really see the industry changing much from this unless they can produce diamonds at a fraction of the cost of silicon. The reason they don't use Germanium (i think its germanium) in cpus is because it is not as abundant and not as cheap as silicon.