Replacing Silicone

Replacing Silicon

In its latest effort to boost the performance of chips, which are currently made of silicone, Intel researchers now have made inroads into replacing silicone with a compound semiconductor made from a blend of the elements Indium and Antimony.

Intel has been collaborating with Qinetiq Ltd, a UK based firm on the new design which it plans to launch in 2015 or later.

Click to expand...

mobilemag

I know this is what 9/10 years off, but it is still good news and looks like Intel might of found a solution to silicon.

....I thought silicone was a good thing? Geez now im confused

CoreGamer said:

....I thought silicone was a good thing? Geez now im confused

Click to expand...

Silicone is a good thing, but we are getting to a point were we are pushing silicone unto the point ti breaks down. iirc the reason that CPU's die from heat and over volting is that it breaks down the silicone and thus you loose the cpu. I think also one reason were aren't seeing faster cpu's is cause silicon breaks down.

Oh I see, but everything has its weaknesses.....

Ha ha ha. You typed silicone. In all seriousness this sounds like a good idea if it doesn't cost a huge amount more.

Well, if it improves performance its good, but I agree with you I hope its not too expensive

z0n3 said:

Ha ha ha. You typed silicone..

Click to expand...

Yeah... I'm thinkin to myself "yeah.. boobs are good, but they don't make computers very fast..."

But... we have been using silicon for the past 50 or so years and have been doing very well.. BUT we are reaching the limits the material can bring us too. The mobility electrons and holes in silicon is much worse than that in materials such as Germanium, GaliumArsenide (and dirivatives like InGaAs, InGaAsP)..

We are reaching the quantum limits of the oxides in the gate of the FET's, so our speeds can't be improved by shrinking much more.. Other things like making the actual electrons travel faster by different material choice is the way to go.

Problem is these things are cost and manufacturing prohibitive. We've gotten very VERY good at making silicon. When we make a boule, its 99.999999% pure silicon. With the other materials, its much closer to 99.9%.. No good.

One wafer of Silicon is worth like 13 bucks. One wafer of GaliumArsenide is somewhere around 50. Cost prohibitive.

BTW: Did you know that the primary materials cost of our chips is not the actual chip itself? As it turns out, the individual P4 chips (my teacher is an influential researcher in a lot of industries, including intel.. so all of his examples are pentium) works its way out to around 30 bucks a chip.. including the "cost" per transistor and stuff like that.

The ceramic holder is about 60. So. You're paying for pins.. not for processors ;- ]

perfectturmoil said:

The ceramic holder is about 60. So. You're paying for pins.. not for processors ;- ]

Click to expand...

I would say you are paying for research and overhead cost more than anything.

LabRat23 said:

I would say you are paying for research and overhead cost more than anything.

Click to expand...

Well yeah, of course ;- ]

But strictly from a materials / manufacturing cost standpoint, its not the actual processor thats $

Ha ha ha. You typed silicone.

Click to expand...

Silicone is a compound containing silicon. It's used to lubercate certain mechanical bearings and as part of some thermal compounds.
Silicon is a semiconductor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone

And it is used in impants. That's why I thought it funny to see it involved in a computer discussion. For instance "we are pushing silicone unto the point ti breaks". Apply that to the implant idea and you get humor.

I didn't know that about the processors though(the pins costing more).

I typed silicone, becuase that is what the website had as its spelling. I just cut & paste it.