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Ballistic transistor could lead to terahertz chip speeds
By Stuart Corner
Sunday, 20 August 2006
Scientists at the University of Rochester have been awarded a $US1.1m grant to progress a radical new transistor design that promises to result in much faster chips that use much less power.
Current transistors, incorporated in their millions into integrated circuits, all work by stopping and starting the flow of electrons through semiconductor material to represent the ones and zeros that are heart of digital logic devices The material has resistance so the passage of the electrons generates heat, and it takes time to stop and start the flow of electrons: both factors which become highly significant in chips with millions of transistors switching several billion times per second and which are starting to limit the switching speeds that can be achieved.
The new device developed at Rochester uses a radially different approach: by changing the direction of a free flowing electron slightly it is deflects the electron into one of two opposite directions, representing the one or the zero. "Instead of running electrons through a transistor as if they were a current of water, the ballistic design bounces individual electrons off deflectors as if playing a game of atomic billiards," according to the developers.
"Everyone has been trying to make better transistors by modifying current designs, but what we really need is the next paradigm," said Quentin Diduck, a graduate student at the University who thought up the radical new design. He claims it could lead to "a chip speed measured in terahertz, a thousand times faster than today's desktop transistors."
The device has been named the "Ballistic Deflection Transistor," and according to its developers, it is as far from traditional transistors as they are from the vacuum tubes that preceded them.
According to the research team, other research groups around the world are investigating strange new designs to generate ways of computing at speeds unthinkable with today's chips. "Some of these groups are working on similar single-electron transistors, but these designs still compute by starting and stopping the flow of electrons just like conventional designs," they say.
They claim that a chip built with their ballistic deflection transistors would use very little power, create very little heat, be highly resistant to the 'noise' inherent in electronic systems, and should be easy to manufacture with current technologies. All that would make it incredibly fast.
"We've assembled a unique team to take on this chip," said Marc Feldman, professor of computer engineering at the University. "In addition to myself and Quentin, we have a theoretical physicist, a circuit designer, and an expert in computer architecture. We're not just designing a new transistor, but a new archetype as well, and as far as I know, this is the first time an architect has been involved in the actual design of the transistor on which the entire architecture is built."
The team claims to have already made some progress in fabricating a prototype. "The ballistic transistor is a nano-scale structure, and so all but impossible to engineer just a few years ago. Its very design means that this 'large' prototype is already nearly as small as the best conventional transistor designs coming out of Silicon Valley today."
By Stuart Corner
Sunday, 20 August 2006
Scientists at the University of Rochester have been awarded a $US1.1m grant to progress a radical new transistor design that promises to result in much faster chips that use much less power.
Current transistors, incorporated in their millions into integrated circuits, all work by stopping and starting the flow of electrons through semiconductor material to represent the ones and zeros that are heart of digital logic devices The material has resistance so the passage of the electrons generates heat, and it takes time to stop and start the flow of electrons: both factors which become highly significant in chips with millions of transistors switching several billion times per second and which are starting to limit the switching speeds that can be achieved.
The new device developed at Rochester uses a radially different approach: by changing the direction of a free flowing electron slightly it is deflects the electron into one of two opposite directions, representing the one or the zero. "Instead of running electrons through a transistor as if they were a current of water, the ballistic design bounces individual electrons off deflectors as if playing a game of atomic billiards," according to the developers.
"Everyone has been trying to make better transistors by modifying current designs, but what we really need is the next paradigm," said Quentin Diduck, a graduate student at the University who thought up the radical new design. He claims it could lead to "a chip speed measured in terahertz, a thousand times faster than today's desktop transistors."
The device has been named the "Ballistic Deflection Transistor," and according to its developers, it is as far from traditional transistors as they are from the vacuum tubes that preceded them.
According to the research team, other research groups around the world are investigating strange new designs to generate ways of computing at speeds unthinkable with today's chips. "Some of these groups are working on similar single-electron transistors, but these designs still compute by starting and stopping the flow of electrons just like conventional designs," they say.
They claim that a chip built with their ballistic deflection transistors would use very little power, create very little heat, be highly resistant to the 'noise' inherent in electronic systems, and should be easy to manufacture with current technologies. All that would make it incredibly fast.
"We've assembled a unique team to take on this chip," said Marc Feldman, professor of computer engineering at the University. "In addition to myself and Quentin, we have a theoretical physicist, a circuit designer, and an expert in computer architecture. We're not just designing a new transistor, but a new archetype as well, and as far as I know, this is the first time an architect has been involved in the actual design of the transistor on which the entire architecture is built."
The team claims to have already made some progress in fabricating a prototype. "The ballistic transistor is a nano-scale structure, and so all but impossible to engineer just a few years ago. Its very design means that this 'large' prototype is already nearly as small as the best conventional transistor designs coming out of Silicon Valley today."
