Three deep-in-the-lab technologies will extend PCs' relentless power boosts
Posted 09.25.2008 at 4:42 pm
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Detecting electron spin in silicon: Kevin Hand
Making electrons carry information
An electron’s spin could encode more data for heavy-duty, low-power processing
Most electronic devices read data—the 1s and 0s of binary code—by measuring the presence or absence of an electrical charge. In the past decade, however, scientists have suggested that individual electrons could be turned into single 1s or 0s. Every electron has a magnetic pole and corresponding “spin.” But instead of clockwise or counterclockwise, researchers distinguish electron spins by their orientation: up or down, 1 or 0.
Until recently, scientists had been able to control and detect electron spin (which allows the devices to operate at lower power) in semiconductors such as gallium arsenide, a material used in laser diodes, but not in silicon—a major hurdle because the entire infrastructure of computer manufacturing is still ruled by techniques used with silicon. Finally, last year Ian Appelbaum, now a physics professor at the University of Maryland, shot groups of electrons with aligned spins across 350 microns of silicon and determined the final angle of their spin. In another development, Igor Zutic and his colleagues at the State University of New York at Buffalo have shown that if you align the spins of electrons in a semiconductor laser, it operates at lower power. Such lasers could transfer up to 1,000 times as much data between different parts of a computer as the copper wires used today.
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AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ive always wondered why computers had to load
It seems like we should be able to do Trinary computations with electron-spin. Either no electron, up electron, or down electron.
Is this possible? Or would it be too difficult to change all of our computer infrastructure to accommodate trinary processing? Or would it be just slow us down because we'd have to convert everything back down to binary?
I don't think trinary computations are out of the question, they're just a little ahead of us right now. In order to perform trinary operations, we would have to completely rewrite machine code to take advantage of this advancement. Til then, best to stick with binary.
This isn't the first time I've heard of memristors, but I still get excited when I think about the prospect of "save state" for my computer :D
Now all we need is a genius scientist to develope a process for replacing slow, cumbersome electrons with shiny new photons! Then we'll be in super-duper computer business.
But will it ever be fast enough to keep up with
my furious jackin'? FilthyRichmond.com
Wouldn't be possible to do completely analog computations using memristers? I remember reading that they can store analog data. Instead of binary we could use trinary or even decimal or hex computations. Of course, this would be difficult and I haven't a clue of how we would make the switch.
This is more an improvement of memory vs CPU power though CPUs have been powerful enough for what most people do for a long time and good thing too since they have not improved no where near as much during the past 8 years as they have during the past 8 years before that.
But memory and storage have been a bottle neck since the P2/G3 days.
I also wonder how well do these memritors handle radiation since they deal with electron spin?
Radiation is everywhere from stray neutrons from decay of naturally occurring radio isotopes and cosmic rays.
This could effect off data retention times while they are powered off.
i really hope that they overcome the hurdles that come with a new product such as that
it would be pretty sweet to have a computer that would boot instantly (raising the amount of time that i can waist on the computer quite a bit :P)
and i think trinary computing would open a world of possibilities, it would be amazing if trinary was made backwards compatible allowing everything to work
austin
Our technology will only be as good as our minds and you can only go so far as size,power,weight,speed and all the other attributes of a computer.
And what about those computers that have caught on fire because of overheating?Could these turn into ticking time bombs?
-THE KID
ha my computer just caught on fire yesterday
Lol, i rest my case!
-THE KID
lol
THIS IS THE MOST IRRESPONSIBLE ARTICLE I HAVE EVER SEEN. IT SHOULD BE TAKEN DOWN. PLEASE, DON'T SHOW PEOPLE HOW TO DO THIS. THEY WILL GET CATARACTS IF THEY TRY IT.
THE POPPING VIDEOS ARE GENERALLY DONE BY SOMEONE DROPPING THE POPPED CORN FROM ABOVE.
guess who i am!
I didn't see anything irresponsible in this article. It's quite clear that computers will only continue to get faster. This is a good thing as far as productivity goes, but it's terrible for our already dwindling attention spans. I would like to see more compatibility between computers. http://www.rentex.com