The world of processor
and semiconductors in general could experience major upheavals.
Very encouraging news from the Vienna University of Technology, but according to the researchers on the job, it will take some patience before discovering the first concrete applications.
0’s, 1’s and many other things in between
At work for many years, a group of researchers from the Vienna University of Technology presented some of their work on transistors. Scientists have indeed come up with what they call an adaptive transistor.
Basically, this electronic component at the heart of all the products that we know, can only adopt two “states” which can be summed up as “0 or 1”. The idea behind the adaptive transistor is obviously to go beyond this duality by allowing other “states”.
However, the Viennese researchers did not stop at announcements and presented what is called a “proof of concept”, a kind of working prototype of their find. Walter Weber, Masiar Sistani and Raphael Böckle, three of the members of the Viennese team, specified that their transistor is particularly ” delicate To produce.
Complements to traditional transistors
” We connect two electrodes with extremely fine germanium wire through an extremely clean high quality interface. Above the germanium part, we place a grid of electrodes like those that exist on conventional transistors. The decisive element is the presence of an additional control electrode which has been placed on the interfaces between the germanium and the metal. It makes it possible to dynamically program the function of the transistor. “
The researchers believe, however, that these difficulties should be fairly easy to overcome. They further point out that “ the electronic structure of germanium is special. What is called negative differential resistance helps give the transistor exactly the properties we need, when we need them. “.
In some cases, the properties of these new transistors should make it possible to reduce the number of components required. The Viennese cite the example of ” arithmetic calculations that require 160 conventional transistors, but only 24 germanium transistors “.
However, there is no question of replacing all the transistors with these new models which must act rather as a “complement” a bit like the FPGAs which do not aim to replace traditional processors, but to supplement them on certain tasks.
Source: TechPowerUp
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