![]() By using the tech demonstrated by these scientists, data centers could save up to a third off of their huge energy expenses. According to one of the researchers Chen Sun, it’s exactly this movement of data between CPUs, memory and network parts that eats between twenty to thirty percent of energy used in data centers. To shift one terabit of data per second off the chip takes just 1.3 Watts. Thanks to using photons, this kind of CPU uses much less energy for the same operations. The fruit of the cooperation between three universities is particularly sweet for data centers. It’s the first processor that can use light to communicate with the external world,” said the chief researcher and professor of electric engineering and computer sciences from University of California Vladimir Stojanović. More information on the new transistor can be found in a recently published paper on the American Chemical Society's website.The scientists are sure this is a huge technological breakthrough. "The new technology is more likely to be incorporated into computer chips as an add-on in the future." "We don't want to completely replace the well-established silicon based transistor technology with our new transistor, that would be presumptuous," said Sistani. At that rate, it doesn't take much imagination to envision how this breakthrough could be scaled to significantly impact efficiency and operating frequency. Professor Walter Weber, another member of the team, said an arithmetic operation that previously required 160 transistors is now possible with just 24 transistors thanks to the new design. Walter Weber, Masiar Sistani and Raphael Böckle (left to right). The design, Sistani said, enables new degrees of freedom that can give the transistor the exact properties it needs at any given time. With the help of the control electrode, we can modulate at which voltage this threshold lies." After a certain threshold, however, the current flow decreases again - this is called negative differential resistance. "When you apply voltage, the current flow initially increases, as you would expect. The researcher further explained that germanium was chosen due to its special properties. It can dynamically program the function of the transistor," Sistani added. What is decisive is that our transistor features a further control electrode, which is placed on the interfaces between germanium and metal. "Above the germanium segment, we place a gate electrode like the ones found in conventional transistors. ![]() Masiar Sistani, one of the researchers that worked on the project. "We connect two electrodes with an extremely thin wire made of germanium, via extremely clean high-quality interfaces," said Dr. In addition to the usual control gate (red) there is also a program gate (blue). The researchers' prototype works a bit differently. Individual atoms with an electron removed are positively charged. In standard single-electrode transistors, free-moving electrons carry a negative charge. This structure allows for the creation of simple logic circuits, and when you squeeze billions of them into a single package, you get something akin to a modern processor (in the simplest terms, of course). To explain how it works, one needs to start with a basic understanding of an ordinary transistor.Īs SciTechDaily highlights, a transistor is a tiny component that either allows current to flow, or blocks its flow, based on whether or not electric voltage is applied to a control electrode. The revolutionary new transistor was produced using germanium, an element on the periodic table with an atomic number of 32. What just happened? Researchers from the Vienna University of Technology have developed an adaptive transistor designed to provide more flexibility during run-time. ![]()
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