Say goodbye to a computer chip silicon era
According to the New York times reported that Moore's law will die in the industry that preach, but scientists say that the birth of the new material will make this law continue to be valid, the next generation of computer chips with the use of new nano materials more integrated, the manufacturing cost is lower, is likely to make computer chips farewell silicon era.
According to the report, in 1965, Gordon e. Moore (Gordon e. Moore), said roughly every 18 months, number of transistors on silicon etching will be doubled.Soon after that critics began to predicted the slowly "Moore's law" leading to an end.
Recently, industry experts warned increasingly clear: the development of semiconductor industry is stagnant, Intel co-founder Dr Moore is going to end.
If that is the case, the computer world will suffer a huge impact.The innovation of the personal computers, music players and smart phones and the transistor is directly related to rapid decline in costs.On the size of the nail with billions of transistor silicon lowest price a few dollars.
Optimism, however, said the scientists and engineers, Moore's law is not dead, but it's in evolution.They think that, with the aid of a new type nano materials, the manufacturer may make nearly the size of molecular circuit.This kind of nano materials including metals, ceramics, polymerization or composite materials, they have their own special structure.
Semiconductor design, for example, researchers are developing some of the chemical process, so that the materials in the semiconductor chip to form a very thin circuit design, to achieve "self-assembly" (self assemble) circuit.Scientists believe that nanometer circuit design and combine traditional chip manufacturing technology, can produce a new type of computer chips, it not only keep Moore's law is valid, but also reduces the manufacturing cost of chip.
"Self-assembly is key," SAN jose, California, IBM's Almaden Research Center (Almaden Research Center director of science and technology of chandra plug Carl as Yang (Chandrasekhar Narayan) said."What do you want with the power of nature to help you get the job done. Brute-force doesn't work, you have to work with nature, let things happen naturally."
In order to achieve this, semiconductor manufacturers must be from the era of silicon to "age" of material transformation.Silicon valley researchers are leading the trend, they through the powerful new super computer simulation of their predictions.Although silicon valley not manufacturing semiconductor chips, but the research and development of new materials could let computer world turn heaven and earth in the next ten years.
"Material is very important for human society," Stanford physicists first zhang sheng said.He led a group of researchers recently devised a tin alloy material, has approximate superconducting properties at room temperature."All the time with material named - the Stone Age, the iron age, now we have silicon era. In the past, people came across materials. Once we have the ability to predict material, will be very different."
Calculate material revolution is likely to be the technology needed to specify a new path for the next generation of computer chip.This is also IBM preferred direction.At present, the company is experimenting with a kind of automatic formation of super fine mesh structure material, it can be used in the circuit pattern is formed on a silicon chip.
As Dr Yang was cautiously optimistic attitude, he says, manufacturers using self-assembly technology after there is no need for investment purchase lithography.Lithography using x-rays to etching tiny circuit, for $500 million.When it comes to make the circuit with lower cost more intensive computer chips, he said: "the answer is probably yes."