3 ms·
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
by 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 agoYou'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 agoTo 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!