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Technology

Plastic Valley? 83

Posted by michael from the watch-out-for-the-magnifying-glass dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Welcome to Plastic Valley - Will the next chip revolution use plastic?" We've run several other stories about making electronics out of plastic - this one suggests that it is 5-15 years away, which I think means approximately the same as "We have no idea if this will ever be feasible".
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Plastic Valley

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  • The plastic in question is pentacene, and it has also been used to make Efficient Plastic Solar Cells [photonics.com]. Efficiency is only aroud 2%, a far cry from silicon's 15%, but if they made all the plastic food containers out of it, maybe they could use it as a supplemental supply in California. :-)
  • "And all of these gadgets would be so cheap you could throw them away with a clear conscience."

    This makes me sick. A clear conscience because the item is so cheap, it doesn't matter if you throw it away??? What about the cost to the rest of us? I hate this attitude of disposible this, disposible that. I don't want a disposible camera, I don't want disposible paper plates, and I certainly don't want a disposible processor.

    Convenience shouldn't be our ultimate goal. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

  • check your average inkjet printer, the head is connected to the rest of the electronics by what exactly ?

  • Disposable is bad (Score:3)

    by gpig ( 244284 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @03:12AM (#468169)
    The last part of the linked report turned my stomach .... "these parts will be so cheap that you can throw them away with a clear conscience."

    WHAT?

    I tend to find that I can throw things away with a clear conscience if I know that they're going to rot down or get recycled. Of course geeks are good recyclers since they always keep (and use) old computers.

    There is a tradeoff between power consumption (when new powersaving tech is introduced) and keeping and old machine but this is still worrying. Indeed, it's almost as bad as the disposable mobile phone thing.

    The high tech solution to this is lots of nice nanobots that will separate out the metal / plastic from such devices and leave us with big piles of raw materials to use again. Anyone with an electron microscope that can put some together? ;)

    Enough rant for today ....

    gpig

  • If people start over-clocking these babies, we'll need good ventilation. Can you imagine the discussions? "Dude, my motherboard melted all over my hard drive."
    Or recylcing plants ... Green for bottles, blue for cans, yellow for disposed circuitry.

  • Re:What about if we run out of oil? (Score:3)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @06:19AM (#468171)
    If we run out of oil we do NOT run out of feedstocks for making plastic.

    Everything in petroleum oil can be found, and refined from, plants.

    Henry Ford once envisioned cars made of plastic refined from soybeans grown by local farmers. He went so far as to actually produce a soybean plastic Model T.

    Linoleum is made from plant oils.

    You have grown up in a petroleum centric society, but petroleum isn't the only way to achieve everything we do now. Free you mind, and the rest will follow.
  • "I'd like to return this underwear"


    "Why certaintly sir. May I inquire as to why you are dissatisfied?"


    "It Hz..."

  • Imagine the "Tupperware Party" of 2030...

    "And this handy little storage bowl not only has an easy-lock lid, but it can also be located with its onboard GPS tracking system in case a friend 'forgets' to return it!"

  • A single wafer using crystalline silicon, for example, costs about $200 per square inch to make

    If that were the case, I don't understand how new chips 1/3rd that size can sell for $60 at retail. Is the figure wrong?

  • >>And all of these gadgets would be so cheap you could throw them away with a clear conscience.

    Oh you could, could you? What were these gadgets made from again? Did you say *plastic*? Why not advocate RECYCLING?

    Also, which is more plentiful, sand or oil? Granted, plastic "would reduce the fragility and bulk of screens," making larger screens feasible. Believe me, I have wanted a wall screen for a long time. Heck, why *shouldn't* my house mimick a living entity 24/7?

    But despite the fact that "making any grade of silicon is a difficult, time-consuming, and pricey endeavor" and "the cost of [producing it] is steep", why is there no mention of the relative difficulty and cost of obtaining more oil to produce plastics? Perhaps plastic is the future for this type of application. However, the attitude that clear consciences can be created by discarding non-biodegradable materials is repulsive.
  • It will NEVER compete with silicon on the computational speed bit (the conductance of plastic just isn't high enough) so they are aiming on the cost bit(cheaper than 0.05 euro a pice) which is theoretically possible.

    Sure, it sounds cheap at 0.05 €, but exchange rates makes it sound a lot cheaper than it might actually be. Consider, for example, that you'd need to shell out roughly 31,500 Turkish Lira to get one of these puppies!

    Doesn't sound so cheap anymore, huh?

    information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.

  • It's already possible to layout a PCB pattern with a computer and print it to special "paper" on a laser printer, and then heat fuse the toner to a copper-clad board to serve as the etchant resist.

    Now if they'll only make laser printers that can print directly to phenolic or epoxy boards we could give mom's steam iron back :-)

  • 10 years from now, perhaps circuits will be downloadable and printable straight to paper, without needing any components! Think about it, using primer coats in between, you could potentially print 10+ layers on a single piece of paper. If this is what the hobbyists will be doing, imagine what the rest of electronics will look like?

    Free hardware... can the GPL handle it? ;-)

  • No, actually the point would be. . . (Score:3)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @06:54AM (#468179)
    A ROLLABLE computer.

    Think about it. You can print a monitor AND all computer circuits on a sheet of plastic.

    Print it on a sheet of flexible plastic two by three feet, you now have a monitor the size of a standard poster, with ALL the computer electronics included, that you can roll up and put in a mailing tube that weighs nearly nothing detached from its power brick.

    The notebook computer becomes obsolete and is replaced by the "placemat" computer. Indeed, the placemat at your table at Denny's may well be the computer you place your order on and then procede to have a frag fest with the cute girls in that booth over there. Dishwasher safe even.

    E-books become a simple sheet of flexible lexan. Light, durable, AND damn near crunchable.

    Entire PC's will be able to be laminated onto virtually any surface, of any shape or texture.

    PC on a sphere? No problem. PC on a natural rock formation? No problem. PC on your FOREHEAD? Again, no problem.

    I'm currently building a PC that is entirely contained within a desktop. You plug the monitor directly in a jack on the back of the desktop. The drive slots are on the front of the desktop, etc. I'm attempting to do this with standard *desktop* componants. No notebook tricks. It isn't exactly building the Saturn V, but it isn't an insignificant engineering task either.

    Think about this, in the future it may be possible for me to embed such a computer * in the FINISH of the desktop. *

    No, I'm sorry, durability, per se, isn't the issue. The issue is the whole new world of usability and ubiquity

    In the future it is quite possible that the * shrink wrap * an item you buy is packaged in will be more technologically advanced than the item itself.
  • The $200 per inch is manufacturing costs. That does not include the cost to design and market it, nor does in include profit.
  • Well, actually, these plastics are very particular and fussy plastics, it's not like you can just pick up an old polyethylene bottle, melt it down and make chips from it. Moreover, this is hardly going to be a large-volume industry, chips do not suck up the same mass of plastic as a soda bottle.
  • ' "Will that be paper or plastic, sir?" '

    One of the first times I heard that my mind was on a zillion other things and for a moment I thought they were asking if I was paying with cash or a credit card.

  • How much use in reality will plastic chips have?

    I see people already saying that they will not replace standard CPUs but come on folks where will this have use?

    Is this going to a brakthrough only to see the light of day in small battery driven devices or what?

    The curious cowards and the tasteless trolls want to know.

  • 2000 Nobel price in chemistry (Score:4)

    by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @12:48AM (#468184) Homepage Journal
    The 2000 Nobel price in chemistry [nobel.se] was awarded for the discovery that plastics, despite what we all were taught, does in fact conduct electricity in some conditions. For those who like the whole explanation in detail, it is available here [nobel.se] in PDF. There is also a short press release [nobel.se].
    The official site is http://www.nobel.se/ [nobel.se].

    And while we are on the subject of plastics, this [economist.com] is also pretty cool. Instead of "lab on a chip" they are building a lab-on-a-CD. "The technology is already being exploited by Gyros, a spin-off created earlier this year by Amersham Pharmacia Biotech of Sweden. Gyros is betting that plastic compact discs are a better platform for future chemical and biological microdevices than are silicon chips. Apart from being much cheaper than silicon wafers, plastic discs are more compatible with biochemical substances. Also, embossing techniques for putting microstructures on a CD's surface already exist, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel."
    In fact, the whole damn Technology Quarterly [economist.com] from The Economist [economist.com] is pretty damn interesting. I tried to get it submitted, but...(insert standard "Slashdot never posts my stories whine).

    ************************************************ ** *

  • What about if we run out of oil? (Score:4)

    by CptnHarlock ( 136449 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @12:55AM (#468185) Homepage
    First we have to stop burning so much of our plastic garbage and start recycling it cause if we now find yet another use for plastic, the oil reserves will deplete even faster. I know people have been saying for several decades "Soon we'll be out of oil" and then they find a new place to drill, but the oil is limited and does not "regenerate" at the same speed that we use it...
    --
    "No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
  • Off-topic, but that's a very clever anti-spam ;-)

  • I'm sure this is all wrong (Score:3)

    by CaptainAlbert ( 162776 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @12:56AM (#468187) Homepage
    I don't believe a word of this. The hard and expensive part of making a chip is photolithography and ion-implantation, i.e. actually building a circuit on top of the subtrate. The reason that silicon is the most commonly used bulk for making chips isn't really because it is a "good" semiconductor - it's not at all! (Although its oxide SiO2 has some desirable properties which make the etching process easier to do on a large scale.)

    The reason they use silicon is because IT'S CHEAP! IT IS JUST (refined) SAND! Far better would be Gallium Arsenide or some similar compound. But that is orders of magnitude more expensive to do in volume (at the moment).

    Flexible circuits?!? I'll believe that when I see it. You couldn't make any IC without using metal layers to route busses around at the higher levels (note: the metal which carries signals around between the transistors is a conductor, NOT a semiconductor!). So, until they find a substance which is flexible, a good conductor at operating temperatures AND which you can deposit on the rough surface of a thin wafer with deep sub-micron accuracy...

    ...I wouldn't invest in any startups claiming to pioneer this technology without reading the small print. :)
  • A goal I focus on is zero cost. You've got companies working on electronics that can be printed with an inkjet printer [semiconductor.net], albeit not my HP1120c.(Yet!) The use of paper, or any cheap substrate for transistors is a good thing.

    If I could build my own transistors, things get very interesting. If I can build transistors myself, that means I can print a gate array to spec.

    Heck, I could even print my own CPU, FPU, or whatever... the GPL coverage of printed hardware could be very interesting. ;-)

    Now I can focus on my ideas from 10 years ago with programmable cells that operate on one bit at a time, talking to their neighbors in a grid... 1,000,000 single bit computers working in parallel... move over Beowolf, hello task specific metahardware. The future is fun!

    --Mike--

  • Find out where the industry is really going (Score:4)

    by Erich ( 151 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @04:02AM (#468189) Homepage Journal
    To find out where the semiconductor industry is really going in the next 15 years, there is the Semiconductor Industry Association's International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (which is publicly available at http://public.itrs.net [itrs.net], though it seems to be down this morning. Do a google search for ``SIA roadmap''.

    Anyway, the roadmap goes out for about 15 years, and has some startling predictions (chips will run at .6-.8 volts, but will need about 200W of power) and it covers everything from processors to memory to everything else. Like, ALL the parameters. It's very comprehensive.

    So, why should you look at it to see what's going to happen in the next 15 years? Because the ITRS is extremely important for the industry. All the chip manufacturers, all the test equipment manufacturers, all the materials manufacturers... they all look at the ITRS to see what they need to work on. The Silicon industry is made up of hundreds of companies, and in order to get them all to meet up at the same place to continue making faster stuff, they need to all be working towards the same goal... and so they all follow the ITRS, for the most part.

    That's not to say that you won't see some new technologies pop in, but the ITRS is typically dead-on for most stuff.

  • Just slightly off the topic, while remaining somewhat on it as well; has anyone heard of laser-optic chips, or something similar? I have not actually investigated this in any detail, but this article just reminded me of some research I saw a long time ago into the idea of using light and mirrors as logic gates, instead of standard transistors. I may have this all backwards, but I am presuming that some sad slashdotter like myself, with far too little to do at work, and far too much bandwidth, has found or knows something about the issue.
  • Another technology that's been 10-15 years away...

    for the last 30 years, or so.
  • Um, printer cables (the ones that go to the print head from the main pcb in the printer)? Plastic and metal and pretty flexible. A big goal isn't to have a scrunchable computer, just a more durable one.

    Have to agree to your point on Gallium Arsenide though - was my first reaction, I mean they only just got silicon lasing [physicsweb.org] and they reckon it's the best semiconductor?!?
  • Why wasn't there any mention of this in "The Road Ahead"?
  • Read the next sentence (or two or three). It goes on to say that amorphous silicon is way cheaper (and any integrated circuit you're likely to encounter is made with amorphous, not crystalline).
  • Plastic IC's? Holographic storage?

    Slashdot
    speculation for nerds. speculation that matters.
  • They have demonstrated the ability to print transistors using these things using an ink-jet printer. You can tune the material so that it is a semiconductor synthetically (i.e. in a vat) and then just lay down semiconducting traces on an insulating substrate. You can mix up 2 vats with different electrical properties, then lay down the appropriate traces. All this at room temperature, and ideally, not in vaccum. The advantage isn't the cost of the materials (the polymers are more expensive than sand), but in processing, plastics are much, much easier to process. no need to implant ions, or all the other hassle of working in silicon.

    These are not going to be used for high-end devices where sub-micron placements are needed, but for cheap throw-away thigns like product tags, smart cards, etc. As far as flexible, a good conductor at operating temperatures, and can be deposited on a flexible substrate.., it's been done. Heck, polyaniline conducts like a metal.

    No, they won't ever replace silion in your PIII, but they do seem to work.

  • Some of the things Ken Hom says about europeans are pretty offensive
  • 200 watts at eight-tenths of a volt is 250 Amperes of current. That sounds hideously impractical. Although most of the transistors in a digital IC are probably Field-Effect type (and I'm not going to bother to go look up all the stuff I used to know about them and have now forgotten), there are probably a few BiPolar Juction types in there as well and six-tenths of a volt is around where PN junctions just start to conduct, which means there won't be much margin for error (or power supply fluctuations).
  • The reason they use silicon is because IT'S CHEAP! IT IS JUST (refined) SAND!

    It's not the only reason they use Silicon. Cost is a main one, but Silicon has other attractive properties for use in semiconductor electronics.

    -----
    "People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

  • > Unfortunately, scientists have yet to stabilize
    > the materials, which deteriorate quickly when
    > exposed to air.

    what worries me about this is how they keep bringing up the word 'ORGANIC' -- and then just tout the technical benefits of using LIVING MATTER, without ever a question to what it is they're actually doing to living things.

    i mean - like regular materials don't 'DETERIORATE QUICKLY WHEN EXPOSED TO AIR' -- because they're not alive and growing. they want the living stuff to just GROW - BE USEFUL - and DON'T DIE -- on a massive scale. this seems to me to show a tremendous amount of disrespect for living things. i imagine they're only using MOLD or BACTERIA or some such, but doesn't anyone care if they're houseplants DIE? if we can hook up wires to a plant, and then eek the life out of it with electricity - well some people may not care, but its a bit like not telling people if they're eating genetically modified foods -- if you don't take care of your cell-phone, the PLANT in it will whither and die -- NO?

  • Excactly.

    Jonathan

  • Um... (Score:1)

    by jmccay ( 70985 )
    Don't we have enough problems with all the plastic that gets put into our dumps now? Do we really want cheap, desposeable(SP?) chips? We'd have to start a "recycle your old chips" campaign.
  • ..is the one on Pamela Anderson's chest. Anything else would be uncivilized.

  • Let's hope that it'll stay cool -- burning styrofoam isn't a very pleasant scent (nor is it good for the enviroment!) :)

    Mike Roberto
    - GAIM: MicroBerto
  • Is there any other information about this? Where is the supporting research?
  • Geek: Dude, Xmass has been over for months ditch the tree already. All this tinsle crap around too.
    Geek2: That's no tree that a....

    In a rare fit of good taste I stop
  • Hmm , I do think this is possible but I can only think of one good reason why we'd use them - flexible circuits, maybe i just have a limited imagination. I figure that the good (smart) people at AMD/Transmeta/Intel have a good reason not to use plastics in chip design (short of the fact that you'd have to use a very high melting point plastic =)).
    --
  • And come out with Ghz plastic underpants.
  • I'll believe it when I see it...unlike religion where people start seeing shit after they start believing it.
  • Lets hope it's Mircowave and Dishwasher safe.
  • I suppose now we'll be expected to OC our processors into oblivion before trashing them to make sure no "really really really small animals" (ala Particle man? o_O) get caught in the gates, just like they have us do with 6 pack plastic containers.

    Of course, I'll avoid the obvious sexual implications ;-)

  • Up until 10 years ago, electronics hobbyists would get circuit diagrams from magazines and 'transcribe' them onto breadboards. In the last 10 years, PCB layouts have started showing up more often in magazines and websites that would be printed to a transparency to make a professional looking PCB to plug components into.

    10 years from now, perhaps circuits will be downloadable and printable straight to paper, without needing any components! Think about it, using primer coats in between, you could potentially print 10+ layers on a single piece of paper. If this is what the hobbyists will be doing, imagine what the rest of electronics will look like?

    Perhaps solid state will mean exactly that, dense bricks of integrated electronics.

    'No user servicable parts' will be more then a casual discouragement to warranty breakers, it'll be a way of life.

  • Move over, Brittany Spheres.


    Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.

  • Are you listening?

    "Plastics". [imdb.com]

    Jacco
    ---
    # cd /var/log

  • Supporting research? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's none.

    The way science works these days is that you don't get any funding if you can't demonstrate that your idea is likely to make a lot of money within a decade.

    Deep thought and systematic research that spans over decades is long gone and dead and has been replaced by "science" of spin-off high tech companies and marketing. And the reason I'm posting AC? I work for one of these companies.

  • Some of us never left... '-ppp
  • If plastics becomes popular again in everyday items, won't we all start to look like we did in the 70s?? Dear God, it must be stopped! Imagine Slashdot in those hideous yellow, turquoise and pink of a 70s kitchen. CmdrTaco will turn into Austin Powers, YEAH BABY, YEAH, and....

    Hang on. Those are all good things. Carry on...

    ************************************************ ** *

  • In the future all posters will have movement and be solar powered.

    Just imagine - you're walking down the street and every advert (including posters glued to walls) will have movement.

    Animated images - HTML's worst practice transfered to the real world

  • Did everyone forget about the paper computer [slashdot.org] article that appeared on Slashdot some time ago?

  • Wires in macroscopic devices (even tiny ones) are maybe 0.1mm wide. Level 1 metal in a 0.18 micron CMOS process is 0.0008mm wide. They're very different ball games.

  • They are researching this already (Score:3)

    by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2001 @05:06AM (#468221) Homepage Journal
    Cambridge Display Technology [cdtltd.co.uk] has done research on these 'printed circuits' for a couple of years now. One of the founders, Dr. Richard Friend, has been one of my lecturers and I once discussed the future of polymer computing with him over a pint :-).

    They look for printing as a cheap manufacturing technique of polymer displays. I asked Friend if polymers could take over silicon in other areas of electronics like CPUs, he said they would be far too slow for that. But maybe some day..

    Anyway, the polymer displays look interesting, for one thing the viewing angles are not limited at all. And imagine a tiny laptop with a decent sized roll-up display..

    --

  • No wonder my 3d accellerator stops working after a week.

    www.ridiculopathy.com [ridiculopathy.com]

  • Why is it that we do not hear any news about the manufacture of electronics using cement? With the proper doping and selection of architecture we could make our sidewalks into HUGE and unwieldy radios and other deathtrap devices. Now THAT would be science...

  • A ROLLABLE computer.

    Think about it. You can print a monitor AND all computer circuits on a sheet of plastic.

    Print it on a sheet of flexible plastic two by three feet, you now have a monitor the size of a standard poster, with ALL the computer electronics included, that you can roll up and put in a mailing tube...

    Now I'll have to put my coffe cup on one corner and my pencil cup on the other to try to keep it from rolling up. Then I'll go to drink a slug of joe and *swiffle* the dang thing rolls up again. As I'm unrolling it, I accidentally press 'rm -rf *[ENTER]'. Doh!

  • Aha! I found it a link.

    I read Thomas Gould's first book on the subject (from the 60s). A brief synopsis of the theory can be found here:

    http://www.energy.com/Resources/Consumer_Education /fungas/origins.asp [energy.com]

    I checked amazon for the book I read, but could not find it. You may need to visit your local university. Look for something like 'Deep Gas Theory.' If you did ok in high-school chemistry, you shouldn't have a problem with this book (from a technical standpoint). BTW, I now go around telling people the earth produces oil according to this theory. All the Chem E's and Geologists I know think it's crazy, however. Not that they think it isn't possible, but that it's so contrary to Conventional Wisdom.

    Stephen
  • Nope.. that's why most red/yellow/black/green people just hate white ones :)
  • Wasn't this part of a movie [imdb.com] or something?

    Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you... just one word.

    Andy Grove: Yes, sir.
    Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
    Andy Grove: Yes, sir I am.
    Mr. McGuire: "Plastics."

    Heh...



  • No, I still see metal, perhaps more exoctic than
    CMOS, as chips get ever more powerful.
    CMOS has been dominant for the past 25 years,
    mainly fir the amount of device intergration.
    Bipolar and GaAS had speed niches, but never
    approached the commerical device count.
    People are still trying however.
  • Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real head.
  • >Antispam is never clever.
    >It's the wrong approach for several reasons. ACs
    >posting the decrypted addresses is one of them.

    Well, it's good enough to trick autoharvesters. So it shouldn't be a problem unless the AC is a total asshole and post it for them. Oh, wait, that's just what you did...

    ************************************************ ** *

  • The reason they use silicon is because IT'S CHEAP! IT IS JUST (refined) SAND! Far better would be Gallium Arsenide or some similar compound. But that is orders of magnitude more expensive to do in volume (at the moment).

    I have to disagree with you strongly here. Gallium Arsenide is NOT far better than silicon.

    1. It is impossible to integrate GaAs to anywhere near the integration levels of Si because GaAs has such a HIGH defect rate. Trying to do a Million Transistor chip in GaAs would be futile; you would have no yield at all.

    2. GaAs has a large amount of "surface" charge and it does not have a high quality native oxide. This means MOSFETs are next to impossible to create in GaAs (or any III/V semiconductor).

    3. While GaAs does have a very high electron mobility (which is why it is faster) it actually has a LOWER hole mobility than silicon. This means complementary structures such as CMOS are not useful in GaAs. This is a real problem because complementary structures have no static power dissipation.

    4. GaAs, like all III/V semiconductors, is mechanically brittle. This is because it is formed as a superlattice of two different materials with slightly different lattice constants. This is a big reason why it is more expensive to make than silicon, it is just plain harder. More to the point, because it is a bulk material, silicon can actually repair it's own lattice when heated. This is a process called annealing and is used in chip manufacturing.

    5. It is difficult to design high performance, low power analog circuits in GaAs. It is used for stand alone power amps in wireless devices, but mixed analog/digital systems are quite hard in III/V materials. If you think mixed analog/digital systems aren't the future, why do you suppose Intel is buying every analog company it can get its hands on?

    In summary, I would submit silicon is dominant for two reasons. First, because it is the best. Second, because it is cheap. It would be more correct I think to say we use CMOS over bipolar silicon technology because it is cheap.

  • Organic does not mean alive per se... Organic simply means that they are composed of carbon based compounds... For example, we've been using organically powered lighting for over a century now, you know them best as carbon arc lamps... These use a stick of solid carbon to generate a spark... We've used organic writing implements as well, such as pencils (graphite) and pens (many inks use finely powdered carbon for pigment)... These are just basic examples, but undoubtably you can see that neither of these are alive per se...

    In other cases, much of the ideas of "grown" circuitry involve living matter in the manufacturing process, but not in the operational process... Some bacteria emit corrosive waste products that are used to etch circuitry, others can be used to eat patterns into circuitry... This qualifies as organic manufacturing as well, but the end product is no more alive than your toaster is now...
  • Metal? But metal is a conductor? The reason we use SEMIconductor is we can, after appropriate doping, select whether they conduct or insulate with a control voltage. How do you suppose we would do that with METAL?
  • 200 watts at eight-tenths of a volt is 250 Amperes of current. That sounds hideously impractical.

    Yeah. Over half the pins will be power pins, and you have problems with metal migration, and ground bounce, and all sorts of bad problems. But that's where they say things are headed -- though that's a way-off thing so they might revise it.

    And, yes, there is little difference between noise and signal now, even less at half today's signal strength!

  • Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...

  • Forget Plastic (Score:4)

    by Carbonate ( 13973 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @11:28PM (#468236)

    Forget plastic the future is styrofoam.

    Just wait until X-Mas morning when you open up that package and inside is your brand new AMD styrofoam CPU that just hit the market. Of course it will be packed in old Pentium IIIs.

  • The next generation of chips in the PowerPC range will be dishwasher-safe and airtight, and will outperform the next generation of intel chips by an order of magnitude. Intel, however, have developed their own plactic chip technology, and are partnering with Plastic Surgeons across the nation ...

    rr

  • Re:Forget Plastic (Score:5)

    by TVmisGuided ( 151197 ) <alan...jump@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @11:31PM (#468238) Homepage

    Ooooh, now THERE'S a design conundrum...make a cooling fan with enough airflow to keep the CPU from overheating, but not so much that you have to chase it across the room every time you boot...

    Sorry, it was there, I had to use it before it went bad.

  • I think I remember talking about this hmmm let me thinkk http://slashdot.org/articles/00/10/17/1750244.shtm l [slashdot.org]
  • people start seeing shit after they start believing it.

    People believe in something and strive towards it and only then are they able to build or achieve that shit. If it hadn't been so we wouldn't have reached this advanced state of development.

  • It IS feasible... (Score:5)

    by asciimonster ( 305672 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2001 @11:35PM (#468241) Journal
    Philips [philips.com] Research Labs in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (aka "Natlab" [philips.com]) is working on it for quite some time now. And it's looking quite promicing. They have a working prototypes [philips.com] now. But it lags on allmost every point: Computational speed, minituralization, and (for the moment) cost. The problem is getting it to market. It will NEVER compete with silicon on the computational speed bit (the conductance of plastic just isn't high enough) so they are aiming on the cost bit(cheaper than 0.05 euro a pice) which is theoretically possible. Result: Disposable computer chips... Mmm. I'll have a side order of PolyLED screens [philips.com] they're making.
  • When I go to the computer store, will they ask the same question I hear at the grocery check-out line?

    "Will that be paper or plastic, sir?"

    (paper cellphones last week, silicon plastic this week... )

    A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
  • sadly, that might be an improvement to the /. color scheme... *sigh*...

    ---
    I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
    They're still in, aren't they?
  • He proves that not only are plastics conducters with some doping techniques, it's really easy and you can do it in your own home. He came to my school and showed us the plastic LED screen that bends and the plastic chip that is going to be used in grocery stores as well as plastic transistors. It's all here now and the plastic chips cost 1cent a piece to make and will most likely see use in grocery stores in under 5 years.
  • Cool.. :) .. Never heard of this theory.. Got a link or something where I can read more about it? Don't give me a google.com?serch=blbalbala.. :) .. It sure sounds weird.. Where do these microbes get their C and H from? How does it get inside the Earths crust? And where did it come from in the first place.. :?
    --
    "No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
  • Damned .. I completely missed that. Damn. P-l-astic. =(
    --
  • Plastics used in chips (i.e. Conductive Polymers), aren't suitable for *all* chipset uses. Polymers will be used in things like thin display units, etc. The versatility of polymers shines in printable chipsets, but as far as conductivity and other factors go, plastics are not up to par. Copper will be the *element* used most in motherboards, etc.
  • Thanx for the link Stephen. Yes, I did very well in chemistry, my favorite subject next to computers.. :).. Interesting theory. Here's the summary:
    • Even further back in time than the first theory, the earth was formed from the "stuff" of the universe.
    • This "stuff" contained oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen as well as very, very small organisms called microbes.
    • The microbes get oxygen from the rocks and use it to change carbon and oxygen molecules into oil and gases.
    • Gould supports his theory by pointing to the fact that the chemicals found on earth are the same ones that are found on other planets. He encouraged the search for microbes in the earth's core as well as on other planets. Partial support for his theory was recently obtained from a Martian meteorite found on earth -- it contained microbes!
    But:
    • That the Earth is formed of stuff from the universe is ok. But microbes are a bit more complicated than atoms. I don't think they can be part of the "stuff" from the universe.
    • The microbes use O and C to make gas?? AFAIK petroleum (gas and liquid) is built almost exclusively of C and H. Especially the simpler forms like for instnace methane:CH4 or even the more complicated benzene:C6H6. (In fact I can't remember a single one that contains Oxygen.) I don't see where the oxygen fits in the picture. :) .. Even if it's only a catalyst they don't mention H. I don't think a microbe is capaable of breaking O down to H...
    • The microbes from Mars thingie. I was equaly exited when they announced that. But AFAIK the microbes were supposedly Martian ones and not space microbes.
    I'll have to look deeper into this. Probably there are better explainations in the book. This little summary is not very convincing.

    Cheers...
    --
    "No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."

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