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Nanotechnology To Replace Conventional CMOS 91

Posted by timothy from the until-there's-an-ipod-nano dept.
neutron_p writes "There is a lot of hype around nanotechnology these days, but some things are going to work in a near future anyway. IMEC announced a program aimed at seeking alternatives to the current CMOS manufacturing technologies using nanotechnologies. IMEC will investigate the use of semiconducting wires, carbon nanotubes and spintronics or electron spin." (IMEC describes itself as "Europe's leading independent research center" in the fields of microelectronics and nanotechnology.)
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Nanotechnology To Replace Conventional CMOS More

Nanotechnology To Replace Conventional CMOS

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  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Brandon One ( 760352 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:00PM (#10551742)
    Size really does matter afterall. Who knew?

  • Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Power Everywhere ( 778645 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:00PM (#10551743) Homepage
    Faster, cooler chips about a decade from now when the whole chip paradigm has shifted. Nanotech will still have an application, but not as a replacement for current methods. Instead nanotech will be integrated into new manufacturing technology from the ground up.

    • Re:Translation: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kilonad ( 157396 ) *
      How many cores will there be on a single chip a decade from now? About 64-128 if Moore's law holds (remember, it's the number of transistors, not the speed). I highly doubt we'll see more than 4-8 cores on desktop computers, even given a whole decade. There will come a point where adding more cores won't be economical or the sensible answer for more computing power, just as making chips faster isn't the answer right now. The paradigm will then shift towards either making the individual cores smaller in
      • Nanotechnology is positioning itself as the answer ten years from now, you just can't see it.

        Not without a microscope, at least.

        [rimshot] Thanks, I'm here all week, enjoy the buffet!

  • Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JorDan Clock ( 664877 ) <jordanclock@gmail.com> on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:00PM (#10551745)
    Finally an application for nanotechnology that's getting some attention that doesn't involve little machines crawling around my brain and floating through my blood stream.
    • actually, 99% of nanotechnological research entails projects like this (or similar w/ dna or other self-assembling systems). It's primarily only in the popular media and sci-fi/fear mongering sites/papers where you hear about nanobots crawling around inside your body.
      • That's what I meant by finally this kind of technology gets some attention. I know most of nanotechnology will never come in contact with people, but it seems like media and what not would lead you to believe that's the only possible application.
    • Or it may be your blood floating through a little nanomachine.

      We have heard enough about 'System-on-a-Chip', nows its time for 'Lab-on-a-chip'

      Agilent [agilent.com] has an interesting blurb on the subject.

      The lab-on-chip concept envisages such things as a disposable device smaller than a postage stamp, with the ability to steer blood and reagents around on a electrode grid or nanotubes. Mix, split, deliver to sensors. Results provided electronically to an external device. Blood work can be done on the spot without

  • Well nothing yet (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:01PM (#10551749)
    All the site says is that they are investigating this.

    IMEC program participants will investigate the use of semiconducting wires, carbon nanotubes and spintronics and, at the same time, develop the metrology and theoretical approach required as a backbone for implementation of the new methodologies.

    I know several other places that have been doing this for a while now. How is this any news at all?
    • Quite true. Given the current state of these technologies, we haven't even legitimately started the classic "20 year invention-to-application clock" yet!

      For those unfamiliar, it's "well established" that new technologies typically exhibit a 20 year lag between invention and economically relevent application, with the classic example being the Internet (1969->1990). Others examples include Radio, Television, Trains, Steam Engines, etc. etc. The timing varies but no significant technology ever had le

    • There's been a few Physorg stories show up on /. recently, and they've been abstracts of stuff that's old news. I wanna moderate the site down (redundant?).

  • Electron spin versus magnetic charge (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:01PM (#10551752)
    We've heard this all before ... in hard drives! Back in 1999 [eet.com], manufacturers started using electron spin rather than magnetic charge to store data. From the article ... "Magnetoelectronics manipulates electrons in semiconductors via electron spin, rather than charge." Most hard drives today are GMR (giant magnetoresistance), or technology derived from GMR.

    So it's not too wild to think that they'll be able to do it in RAM and such as well.
    • I think that's just the r/w heads, the data is still stored magnetically as it always has been.

    • You dont know what you are talking about... (Score:4, Informative)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:29PM (#10551887)
      GMR discs still store the data magnetically.
      The MR and GMR effect only replaces the normal inductance coils in the read-head. While older heads registred a voltage spike because of the magnetic flux change in the coil while the data-layer moved below the head, the new heads have a multilayer material that has a spin-sensitive resistance, so the local magnetic field created by the data on the disc spin-polarizes the electrons IN THE HEAD (nothing on the disc) and thus created a vast difference in head resistance depending on the magnetic field.

      So the only difference is in how to get the MAGNETICALLY stored data back... Nothing changed in the storage per se.
    • I spoke with a researcher at Ohio State (Dr. Arthur Epstein) a couple years ago who was working on a plastic semiconductor that would allow random access seek time on a permanent storage unit.

      His details were geared more to the layman, and I think his applications were more wide-spread than hard drives or consumer-grade computers (think along the lines of wearable computers, including pen-shaped computers; he mentioned several military / GPS appliations), but he thought the technology would hit the market

  • Ehh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:07PM (#10551778)
    Big IC manufacturers hate adopting radically new and risky technologies before they are forced to. I wouldn't expect CMOS to be phased out for a good while. Remember CMOS logic was designed in the early 60s, but most IC manufacturers continued to use PMOS and NMOS chips until the late 80s and early 90s when the size and number of MOSFETs going into ICs caused far too much power dissipation using NMOS/PMOS...

    • Re:Ehh... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Deorus ( 811828 )
      Excelent, now could you please translate all those acronyms into more plain English just so electronics illiterates such as me could actually read your comment?

      From AcronymFinder [acronymfinder.com]:
      IC = Integrated Circuit
      CMOS = Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
      PMOS = Positive-Channel Metal Oxide Semiconductor
      NMOS = Negative-Channel Metal Oxide Semiconductor
      MOSFET= Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor

      Am I getting it all right?
      Thanks in advance!

      • Re:Ehh... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Sorry, CMOS is the logic technology that is used to build most modern ICs (small device containing many many semiconductors). CMOS is built out of MOSFETs (when someone says 'there are X million transistors on this microprocessor' they are talking about the MOSFET count). The primary feature of CMOS is that it sports two complimentary networks of transistors that only connects VDD or ground at any given time. This means that, ideally, when no data is being switched through the circuit there is zero power

      • could you please translate all those acronyms into more plain English just so electronics illiterates such as me could actually read your comment?

        So tell me, moderators (because the question just sounds like a troll to me), does knowing what those acronyms stand for actually help you understand the post? :)

        Really the important point is that it took them 30 years from the initial development of the new IC manufacturing technology (CMOS) to really replace the old crappy technology (PMOS/NMOS). I'm just out

        • Re:Ehh... (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I wouldn't call NMOS/PMOS 'crappy' per se, it's just inherently worse on the power dissipation and isn't very useful for high transistor density and very small MOSFETs. NMOS and PMOS both require nearly half the transistors that CMOS does, and NMOS has the distinct advantage of tending to be faster than CMOS.
    • Acronym overload, please deduct -1 from your Karma and refrain from posting to Slashdot for a 24 hour period.

    • Re:Ehh... (Score:3, Informative)

      by wass ( 72082 )
      spintronics is one of the quickest technologies to go from lab to marketplace, second only to the transistor.

      IC companies have embraced spintronics, your hard-disk read heads now employ GMR, for instance. IBM and other research labs are spending big $$$ to figure out how to make this technology easily fabricateable. This is NOT traditional CMOS, you can only shrink CMOS down so far, this is for moving beyond.

      • GMR in hard disk read heads isn't really spintronics, though. It depends on the interaction between magnetic fields and electrons of different spins, but you don't measure the spin of electrons coming out of a GMR sensor, you measure the current flow just like with a traditional disk read head.

        • Re:Ehh... (Score:3, Informative)

          by wass ( 72082 )
          GMR is certainly spintronics, polarity of electron spin affects the transport through the multilayer. It doesn't matter if you measure the spin of the electrons used in the resistance measurement, you're _effectively_ reading the spins of the electrons in the two magnetic layers (up to an overall parity), as determined through its giant magnetoresistance.

          It seems you are trying to make a semantical argument about this. So don't just take my word for it, see what the Institute of Physics have to say [iop.org] ab

    • So what are manufactures using these days then, if not CMOS?

      As a semiconductor engineer i can tell you that the current standard for most companies is CMOS, and BIPOLAR - the latter being used mainly for RF circuits. The current geometery standard is 0.35um,.

      Smaller geometries are being handled by the larger IC manufacturers such as TSMC who can go down to 0.09um (90nm) at present for gate widths.

      Yes, heat dissipation is large for modern processor, but that's why you've got half a pound of iron bolte

    • Big IC manufacturers hate adopting radically new and risky technologies before they are forced to.

      Are you sure it isn't engineering staffs being slow to implement the new technology? I don't think companies hate new technology, they just don't like investment risk. They want to be where the profit is, which is being "fast followers". As a rule they like to emulate what works. They want to be sure that the design libraries used in the new technology are debugged and working, whether they design the

    • Re:Ehh... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Big_Breaker ( 190457 )
      CMOS "IS" NMOS and PMOS.

      CMOS stands for "c"omplementary "m"etal "o"xide "s"emiconductor. What's complementary you ask? Well they use pmos and nmos gates in series between ground and the rails (the voltage/power source) it all the logic stages. The input gates of the nmos and pmos gates are tied together to drive them simulateously. That means that both gates are never totally "active" and power never shoots straight to ground (or through a resistor). Obviouly that saves a ton of power.

      Anyhow the poi
      • "Well they use pmos and nmos gates in series between ground and the rails (the voltage/power source) it all the logic stages."

        That's called a "totem pole" arrangement of a complimentary transistor pair.

  • Nanotech in colleges (Score:4, Informative)

    by BlindSpy ( 772849 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:09PM (#10551784) Homepage Journal
    Purdue University is making a huge effort to be one of the leading Nanotechnology schools: http://discoverypark.e-enterprise.purdue.edu/wps/p ortal

  • nano inflation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kipsate ( 314423 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:44PM (#10551967)
    The term "nanotechnology" is becoming a bit inflated. Companies know that merely mentioning the word nanotechnology in a press-release ensures a lot of extra attention. It is kind of sad that good ol' Slashdot seems to fall for this cheap trick as well.

    Not too long ago, nanotechnology was about wonderful fantasies of small machines at nano-level assembling molecules or even medicines. Too bad that simple physics prevent this from becoming a reality (the resistance of air at nano-level is too large, for example). Now, nanotechnology is about punching very small holes in metal [ibm.com].

    Maybe it is about time that everyone realizes that nanotechnology is not as exiting as it used to be.

    • Re:nano inflation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by l3v1 ( 787564 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @03:53PM (#10552009)
      Too bad that simple physics prevent this from becoming a reality (the resistance of air at nano-level is too large, for example)

      In many cases that is not a problem. E.g. you make metal gathering proteins to be released in a liquid, or proteins able to detect and contain specific other proteins in a blood stream, and I could go on and on.

      Nanotechnology doesn't just mean to be able to manufacture chips on smaller scales. Another very much more important aspect is what we could do with specificly "manufactured" proteins in medicine. And this is not a such far dream, there are people working on this, even some which I know, let alone those whom I don't.

    • Wired ran an interesting article about this. Not a huge surprise, but "nano" has replaced "micro" as the tech buzz word du jour. I think players in the industry realize this and the consumer base will come around in due time -- just the way we have come to accept micro-this, i-that and e-everything.

      For anyone interested in the political/institutional side of science, the Wired article is a good read:

      http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/drexler .html

    • Re:nano inflation (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Goldsmith ( 561202 )
      Semiconductors were discovered in 1874, and it wasn't until 1948 that the transistor was discovered, it took a few more decades to really commercialize it. On the whole, roughly 100 years from the discovery of semiconductors to widespread commercial use.

      We first developed a device (STM) to image and move individual atoms in 1987. It would not surprise me in the least if it took 100 years for us to come up with something which would be widely commercially available based on atomic scale manufacturing. Ha

    • ...nanotechnology was about wonderful fantasies of small machines at nano-level assembling molecules or even medicines. Too bad that simple physics prevent this from becoming a reality (the resistance of air at nano-level is too large, for example).

      I disagree (not with your definition of nanotech, but with your statement that it is impossible). There are actually examples of "nanotechnology" in nature, such as the cell. There are plenty processes whereby molecules are built up piece by piece in the c

    • Re:nano inflation (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not too long ago, nanotechnology was about wonderful fantasies of small machines at nano-level assembling molecules or even medicines. Too bad that simple physics prevent this from becoming a reality (the resistance of air at nano-level is too large, for example).

      Wow, it's good to know that we don't need to worry about bacteria and viruses any more, since the laws of physics preclude their existence.

  • CMOS? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Scrameustache ( 459504 )
    For those of us who haven't had their 3rd cup of cofee yet, that would be "complementary metal oxide semiconductor".

  • education (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drakyri ( 727902 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @05:17PM (#10552389)
    If this happens soon then it'll cause some trouble; colleges generally don't teach nanotech because it's still very much under development. I'm in a program right now that focuses on CMOS integrated circuit design ... am I going to be obsolete before I get out of grad school?

    I guess this happens whenever things shift to a new technology, but still, it's sort of depressing.
    • I rather doubt it - there are just so many divices where CMOS will be the optimal way forward for cost/packaging/process reasons.

      Just think of the vast amounts of 'glue' logic used in everything - no point going 'nano' just because we could. Same reason 8-bit cpus are used more now than ever before....

  • We're already surrounded by nanotechnology... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hot soldering iron ( 800102 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @06:07PM (#10552656)
    It's called "biology".

    There are several different ways of getting to a functional nano assembler, and one of the current favorites is taking parts of functioning devices (virii and bacteria) and reassemble them into desired configurations.

    The only difference between a "nano" device and a virus is who designed it, Dr. Putz or Mother Nature, (Mom built hers using trial and error, lots of "bugs").

  • Crappy cameras (Score:2, Insightful)

    by memodude ( 693879 )
    Cool! Now we can have crappy cameras that are even smaller!
  • That's a bloody annoying site. Abstractes that provide little more detail than the Slashdot precis, and no links to sources.

  • Yooohooo!!! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nanotechnology To Replace Conventional CMOS

    Yeaah! Finally!! Cant wait get rid of em Chief Marketing Officers, and their whole stupid feature creating, shrinking deadline mandating ilk...

    OH wait.. dang.. its CMOS, not CMOs.. oh well, cant hurt to dream on does it...

  • Processoers, the unknown nanotechnology (Score:3, Interesting)

    by strider_starslayer ( 730294 ) on Sunday October 17, 2004 @10:18PM (#10553787)
    Seriously; all this talk about nanotechnology, is mostly bunk; we ALLREADY have nanotechnology, most of you are using it RIGHT NOW!

    The modern computer processor has bridges that are etched in silicone, a mere 70nm across; that's right 70 nanometers. So instead of saying nanotechnology like it something strange that has never been done before the article should say 'new chips to use nanotubes and spintronix(sp?)'
  • I was at IMEC last month during a conference (ESSCIRC, held in Leuven, Belgium) and I really thought that they had an excellent group of people with great research topics (cubic centimeter sensor nodes, new embedded RAM, nano-fab, etc). That is until I saw a director PICK HIS NOSE AND THEN SUCK HIS FINGER DRY!! When are scientists going to start researching social skills?

  • Ooooh! (Score:1)

    by pyth ( 87680 )
    Let's use MAGIC, too!!!

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