Magnetic fields created using nanotechnology could make computers up to 500 times more powerful if new research is successful.
The University of Bath, England, is to lead an international £555,000 three-year project to develop a system which could cut out the need for wiring to carry electric currents in silicon chips.
The research project, which involves four universities in the UK and a university and research centre in Belgium and France, will look at ways of producing microwave energy on a small scale by firing electrons into magnetic fields produced in semi-conductors that are only a few atoms wide and are layered with magnets.
The process, called inverse electron spin resonance, uses the magnetic field to deflect electrons and to modify their magnetic direction. This creates oscillations of the electrons which makes them produce microwave energy. This can then be used to broadcast electric signals in free space without the weakening caused by wires.
Project Director, Alain Nogaret, says, “We can only go so far in getting more power from silicon chips by shrinking their components – conventional technology is already reaching the physical limits of materials it uses, such as copper wiring, and its evolution will come to a halt.
“But if this research is successful, it could make computers with wireless semi-conductors a possibility within five or ten years of the end of the project. Then computers could be made anything from 200 to 500 times quicker and still be the same size.
Anything that makes the critter faster — for the same buck — is OK by me. Certainly, it takes time and design to ramp something like this up to production — if and when the research proves out. I imagine there will be a few folks bidding to get in on the ground floor.
Can’t wait to put that new pc beside my tv or crt…
I remember crt’s.
Why is the Solar Eclipse Windows wallpaper posted as one of the pics for this?
Didn’t click the link to Nogaret’s website, eh?
meanwhile, by the microwave computer….
“ding”
“Hey Betty, your data is ready……. wait…. it’s still cold in the middle, I’ll let compute a few more microseconds.”
Sounds a lot like what these guys are doing…
😉
No thanks. I’m waiting for the FTL core compputer. No that is going to be fast.
Bistromathics!
OK–so we’re going back to core. Really small core, but core none the less.
Engineering issue:
Where are they going to find equipment to thread the really tiny wire through the really tiny ferrodoughnuts? Yet another nanotech problem that needs a solution…
They are going where I no longer can follow them… I was hoping I’d become a flummoxed old man much later in life.
Uh, Floyd — the article is about getting rid of wires.
11. Eideard–still have to have something that detects if the donut is 1 or 0. The old core did it with wires, hence the snarky comment.
Transmitting digital information internally in a computer via microwave (or other RF) is a security issue, not to mention a radio interference issue. So maybe the computers can be made 200 to 500 times faster using microwave, but others can read what’s being sent, whether they like it or not.
Of course, light waves are a lot more secure, though they really haven’t figured out how to connect computer components within a system using (for lack of a better term) fiber busses (which probably won’t be the same as fiber optic cables).
Floyd, it’s certainly not any area of expertise for me; but, one of my buds who works with the “coneheads up on the hill” [one of our favorite local terms for Los Alamos types] tells me they can vary distance as well as well as most of the other variables with microwaves, nowadays. Maybe he shouldn’t be telling me that much.
Remember, we’re talking about nano-size objects and, I imagine, nano-size microwaves.
I agree with Eideard, since they would be using nano-sized microwaves, it would be something very hard to tap into. Adequate shielding will probably built in to these computers once the technology becomes an industry standard. Wonder when would that be.