China Just Made the World's Fastest Transistor and It Is Not Made of Silicon
China Just Made the World's Fastest Transistor and It Is Not Made of Silicon
Oh neat, the transistors are made of bismuth. China produces 80% of the world's supply and has an export ban on bismuth. Neat.
yet another chinese invention that outperforms the west due to necessity as a result of us restrictions
China is keeping all the cool rocks for themselves, smh
Bismuth is a pretty rock. I love it
"But turning laboratory breakthroughs into commercial chips typically takes years — sometimes decades"
2 years ago: China is 10 years behind on semiconductor technology!!!
1 year ago: China is 2 years behind on semiconductor technology!!!
6 months ago: China is 1 year behind on semiconductor technology!!!
Now: China's new transistor invention will take 10 years to commercialize!!!
While still a valid callout, these "new chips made out of non-silicon are BETTER in EVERY WAY!" experiments happen about once every 6 months. As it turns out, 10% less energy use isn't compelling enough to convince a trillion dollar industry to completely retool from the ground up, and even without the profit motive that's unlikely to change much.
To be fair, it says in the article that this new transistor architecture can be fabricated with existing industrial platforms, so it doesn't seem like it would require a whole lot of retooling.
Two things why this is different. China controls bismuth. So this is a strategic resource they control and puts them squarely outside of current western restrictions on silicon. They are also currently tooling to get their 3nm forges for silicon off the ground. So they are already undertaking the expense. A bonus third thing: China will develop this if they think it is in their long-term best interest in spite of the cost. It's a cost for them to spend now. If it truly gives them an edge here, then it will be even more painful when the west has to do all that retooling to catch up. Patience is a weapon.
Just to be clear: "China wouldn't dare because it's too costly" is a way the west has consistently underestimated them for 40 years now. This is not something a planned economy worries as much about. They can think more long term. For the capitalist, if you can't profit today, there is no tomorrow.
I'm no expert, but if it works I can definitely see a use for 40% faster speeds in things like AI server farms and military applications. It's not like they need to roll it out to every phone and dishwasher in the world.
While still a valid callout, these “new chips made out of non-silicon are BETTER in EVERY WAY!” experiments happen about once every 6 months.
China has been on the ball to curb publish or perish pop science bullshit for about 5 years now. They banned incentive and performance structures in universities that rely on publishing rankings.
Despite this reform, China has maintained it's leadership in paper quality and quantity and is now leading in high-level SME's
It's more likely this is real than it was 5 years ago.
Everyone just needs to accept this is the Chinese century.
There is no point in fighting it, they're better than the americans, they're not using their dominance in a bad way, just go with it and reap the benefits.
This will be in mass production and have proven itself within a year. They're not going to fuck around with this.
esp considering its one of the only industries they are still behind in. i doubt they are sparing any expense at all to make better computer chips than the us.
A shift born of necessity
There’s a geopolitical current flowing beneath this research.
Due to ongoing U.S.-led export restrictions, Chinese firms have been blocked from buying the latest silicon chip-making equipment. The most advanced lithography machines, those that can manufacture 3-nanometer chips, are made by a handful of companies in the West.
By creating a transistor that doesn’t rely on silicon — and which can be fabricated using existing tools in China — Peng’s team may have found a way around those sanctions.
“While this path is born out of necessity due to current sanctions, it also forces researchers to find solutions from fresh perspectives,” Peng said.
It's funny how much this chip bullshit is backfiring. Who knows how long these researchers have been tinkering with this idea (article doesn't say), and then the chip sanctions thrust it forward into high levels of importance. Even if we had researchers coming to similar conclusions here in the US, these researchers in Chian can just "walk down the street" (in effect) and have a chat with the most developed chip foundry in the world and say "let's make this a reality".
And this kind of tech can only go from lab to mass production with state level investment. No company is going to spend hundreds of billions needed to commercialize a new computing substrate when they can just keep squeezing a bit more performance out of silicon.
From the American side I mostly just see a huge emphasis on quantum computing, which is cool, but idk exactly how practical it is at scale, which is how things really affect industry. Like, you can have a quantum computer that is 3000 times more powerful than the next best one, but if you only have one of them and it is privately owned, the expense to run anything on it is going to be astronomical, which will place it outside the use case for most scientific endeavors.
using bismuth oxyselenide (Bi₂O₂Se) for the channel, and bismuth selenite oxide (Bi₂SeO₅) as the gate material.
According to the team, their transistor can run 40% faster than today’s most advanced 3-nanometer silicon chips — and it does so while using 10% less energy.
So a viable alternative.
better keep my hellochinese streak alive i guess
I recently decided to apply for electrical engineering lol
make sure to study mandarin
A fellow student of the dark arts!
I had studied "traffic engineering / mobility planning" for 2 years, but I behind, catching up was difficult because of a change in curriculum and I bit off more than I could chew regarding training social skills.
Computer science was too abstract for me and applied physics was too broad, plus I have a lifelong fascination with technology, how things, magnets and electricity. Electrical engineering also seems pretty secure for the job market, given the omnipresence of electricity. I like the physical and the digital and electricity is the medium that connects them! The university I chose also has a lot of international students, I like meeting people from other places.
I've often thought about possibly moving to China and work as an engineer there, given recent developments in Europe and China investing heavily in science right now. I do find it scary to just start a new life in another country like that, I do feel pretty attached to the place I grew up in.
welcome to the club :)
Not viable because bismuth is radioactive. We're not moving away from silicon anytime soon, I mean we've heard of the hype stories about gallium nitride and carbon nanotube transistors every few months now for nearly a decade, yet almost everything still uses silicon.
Bismuth-209 was long thought to have the heaviest stable nucleus of any element, but in 2003, a research team at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, discovered that 209Bi undergoes alpha decay with a half-life of 20.1 exayears (2.01×1019, or 20.1 quintillion years), over 109 times longer than the estimated age of the universe.
Due to its hugely long half-life, for all known medical and industrial applications, bismuth can be treated as stable.
Bismuth is already used in all kinds of consumer products, and using it in chips would probably be one of the safer uses https://healthyfocus.org/bismuth-potential-dangers/
We’re not moving away from silicon anytime soon, I mean we’ve heard of the hype stories about gallium nitride and carbon nanotube transistors every few months now for nearly a decade
I mean, I work with transistors and gallium nitride transistors are actually a thing. Like you can just buy them yourself. I've looked through a few examples and they seem pretty decent. Certainly there are much fewer of them than the silicon stuff, but I imagine it's a new technology, so that makes sense.
Yes they are obviously a thing, but when we're talking about CMOS logic circuits required for consumer electronics like smartphones, laptops and desktops, they've been around since 2016 in research papers, and haven't really gone anywhere beyond more research papers.
The hyperlink directs to "nl.farnell.com/en-__NL__"...
Are you Dutch too? What a coincidence, haha.
are gallium nitride transistors what make all the new GaN (gallium nitride) USB power delivery devices work? I have one and its awesome. Of course the gallium nitride isn't being used for a microprocessor in that case.
silicone parts are made for toys
