4 ms·

We'd finally have laptops that don't overheat (well, not heat at all) and are not constrained by thermal limits! Imagine putting a desktop CPU into your laptop!

We'd finally have laptops that don't overheat (well, not heat at all) and are not constrained by thermal limits! Imagine putting a desktop CPU into your laptop! (Battery lifetime issues aside)

Turskarama 4y ago
Not so fast, just because something becomes available doesn't mean it will be immediately used for everything it _could_ be used for. Cost remains a factor. I very much doubt room temperature superconductors would ever be used in consumer electronics. They probably wouldn't even be widely used in data centers outside of truly cutting edge "no expense spared" systems.
- codethief 4y ago
  Sure but that's true for many (if not all) things that superconductors might (in theory) enable. I do think, though, that especially in computing there'd be enough economic incentive to use superconductors everywhere if the energy savings are substantial enough.
CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
No heat means no power usage (unless we also find a way around the laws of thermodynamics), so no superconductors aren't going to make your laptop magically not heat up. It could help a bit with power lines going to transistors, but to do actual computions we need to consume power and thus generate heat.
- codethief 4y ago
  You're right, I was being overly sloppy with my wording here. I was only referring to the uniform electric resistance part of energy losses that would be gone. My understanding had always been that the latters makes up a significant portion of the total energy CPUs consume because we're still many orders of magnitude away from the Landauer limit, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle .
  - CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
    To get there we wouldn't just need a superconductor, but a supersemiconductor that could switch instantly between infinite and zero resistance. I don't think we're anywhere near that, let alone one at room temperature. From the top my head, most power is dissipated in switching, then leakage (for that we would actually need higher resistance in the transistors) and only then resistive losses in powerlines.
    - codethief 4y ago
      > From the top my head, most power is dissipated in switching, then leakage (for that we would actually need higher resistance in the transistors) and only then resistive losses in powerlines. Interesting, I stand corrected then!
progman32 4y ago
Most of that heat is generated in the silicon, not the wiring. Unless we discover a semiconducting superconductor with which to replace the silicon junctions, we'll still have plenty of heat dissipation in the CPU.

We'd finally have laptops that don't overheat (well, not heat at all) and are not constrained by thermal limits! Imagine putting a desktop CPU into your laptop! (Battery lifetime issues aside)

Turskarama 4y ago

Not so fast, just because something becomes available doesn't mean it will be immediately used for everything it _could_ be used for. Cost remains a factor. I very much doubt room temperature superconductors would ever be used in consumer electronics. They probably wouldn't even be widely used in data centers outside of truly cutting edge "no expense spared" systems.

codethief 4y ago
Sure but that's true for many (if not all) things that superconductors might (in theory) enable. I do think, though, that especially in computing there'd be enough economic incentive to use superconductors everywhere if the energy savings are substantial enough.

CorrectHorseBat 4y ago

No heat means no power usage (unless we also find a way around the laws of thermodynamics), so no superconductors aren't going to make your laptop magically not heat up. It could help a bit with power lines going to transistors, but to do actual computions we need to consume power and thus generate heat.

codethief 4y ago
You're right, I was being overly sloppy with my wording here. I was only referring to the uniform electric resistance part of energy losses that would be gone. My understanding had always been that the latters makes up a significant portion of the total energy CPUs consume because we're still many orders of magnitude away from the Landauer limit, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle .
- CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
  To get there we wouldn't just need a superconductor, but a supersemiconductor that could switch instantly between infinite and zero resistance. I don't think we're anywhere near that, let alone one at room temperature. From the top my head, most power is dissipated in switching, then leakage (for that we would actually need higher resistance in the transistors) and only then resistive losses in powerlines.
  - codethief 4y ago
    > From the top my head, most power is dissipated in switching, then leakage (for that we would actually need higher resistance in the transistors) and only then resistive losses in powerlines. Interesting, I stand corrected then!

progman32 4y ago

Most of that heat is generated in the silicon, not the wiring. Unless we discover a semiconducting superconductor with which to replace the silicon junctions, we'll still have plenty of heat dissipation in the CPU.