Silicon has had a good long run as the material of choice for computer processors. The problem is, CPUs now reach temperatures that can make them unstable, and if current trends continue, this issue will only get worse. If Moore's Law is to continue, a new material needs to be found for CPUs. Would you believe -- diamonds?
Ever since the beginning of the computer revolution, the brains of these machines have been made out of silicon. Thanks to Moore’s Law, manufacturers now make progressively smaller CPUs with larger numbers of increasingly tiny transistors on each one. Modern processors keep becoming faster and more powerful, but not without certain problems.
One of the biggest issues with CPUs today is heat dissipation. As any overclocker knows, a CPU the size of a postage stamp can generate nearly a hundred continuous watts of heat. That problem will only get worse as current trends in computer design continue. Not too far down the road, however, the heat will reach the limits of the material to support it. Picture opening your computer case to fix a problem and finding out your CPU has turned into a puddle of molten slag.
Chip designers loathe that image as much as users do. That’s why they’re looking for materials other than silicon to support their creations. Some of them are turning to diamonds. At the end of last year, in fact, a laboratory researcher successfully used diamonds this way. Damon Jackson, a researcher with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, displayed a $1,500 natural diamond with a spiral of electronic circuits.
Diamonds have significant advantages over silicon. They are very strong, and they possess an extremely high melting point. “You can operate a diamond-based transistor at higher temperatures than you could operate a silicon-based transistor,” notes John Venables, an advisor at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Diamonds also have certain drawbacks. They are expensive, and, because they are a natural material, no two have exactly the same electrical qualities – which is fine for jewelry, but a problem for sensitive electronic equipment. Ideally, for diamond-based CPUs, you would want an extremely high-quality man made diamond – something that is practically indistinguishable from a mined diamond, yet so consistent in its quality that each one is virtually identical.
People have been attempting to make diamonds artificially for two centuries. The first success came in the 1950s, when a process designed to reproduce the natural conditions that created diamonds a hundred miles underground bore fruit – or, more precisely, diamonds, each about the size of a grain of sand. Since then, though, most man-made diamonds have been only high enough quality to be used in industrial cutting processes and some mid-level jewelry, but not electronics. Thanks to two companies at opposite ends of the eastern U.S., however, this is changing.
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