3 ms·
How would room temperature superconductors magically make silicon semiconductor CPUs run faster?
by mikequinlan 3y ago
How would room temperature superconductors magically make silicon semiconductor CPUs run faster?
- floxy 3y agoYou'd make Josephson Junction based microprocessors with superconductors (replacing the FET based CMOS architectures, and get rid of the silicon completely), and that might lead to a ~100x speed increase. And then the low power could enable integration in the third dimension, where you can stack active circuitry on top of each other, leading to another 10x in density. Right now semiconductors transistors are limited to living on the silicon substrate. There are efforts at doing silicon-on-insulator transistors, but heat dissipation has been a limiting factor.
- mikequinlan 3y agoBut how would room temperature superconductors over a lead-based material like LK-99 lead to any of this?
- floxy 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_computing
- mikequinlan 3y agoThat article talks about cryogenic superconducting as is used in current quantum computers. Allowing room temperatures would greatly reduce costs but I don't see how it speeds anything up. But even then, the current discovery only works with the LK-99 alloy and not any of the materials used in superconducting logic.
- floxy 3y agoYes, the textbooks will need to be rewritten to remove references to cryogenic temperatures if we have a breakthrough technology in room temperature superconductors.
- jacquesm 3y agoBecause it cuts the gate charge time to essentially zero.