Researchers may have unlocked the future of computing by turning flat silicon chips into densely stacked 3D architectures.
Category: computing – Page 14
New ‘3D’ Computer Chips Could Extend Moore’s Law, Study Shows
In recent years, computer chip performance has bumped up against the physical limitations of the space available on integrated circuits.
Now researchers think they’ve found a solution: Start building upwards.
The innovation could help extend or even exceed the Moore’s Law hypothesis established in the 1960s by Intel chairman Gordon Moore.
Ultra-thin semiconductors overcome performance limits with localized thick-contact design
As semiconductor chips become increasingly thinner, the components inside chips are locked in a fierce race to achieve the ultimate ultra-thin state. However, this has presented a structural limitation: the thinner the device, the harder it is for electricity to flow.
Recently, a research team at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) successfully resolved this issue through a simple yet innovative approach: “thickening only the necessary parts.”
The research team, led by Professor Byoung Hun Lee from POSTECH’s Department of Electrical Engineering and the Department of Semiconductor Engineering, has developed a technology that dramatically lowers contact resistance by redesigning the metal-semiconductor contact structure in ultra-thin tellurium (Te) transistors.
C12 Introduces Nanoassembly Process for Carbon Nanotube Quantum Chips
C12 introduced a patented nanoassembly technology that enables precise carbon nanotube placement for future quantum processors.
Microsoft claims new quantum chip 1,000 times better than before
At the heart of quantum computing are qubits, which offer the promise of answering questions that defeat today’s machines, but are notoriously delicate and unstable.
Microsoft says the qubits on Majorana 2, its new chip, survive for an average of 20 seconds, rather than the milliseconds of Majorana 1.
That means the new chip is 1,000 times more reliable — an improvement in performance the tech giant compares to the difference between a phone that needs charging every day to one which needs charging every few years.
Ultrafast laser shrinks to chip scale, potentially lowering costs for diagnostics and atomic clocks
Ultrafast lasers emit pulses lasting only a few hundred femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second). These flashes of light power applications from precision micromachining to eye surgery to optical frequency combs, the Nobel Prize-winning technology behind today’s most precise optical atomic clocks. Yet despite more than two decades of effort, ultrafast lasers have largely remained bulky, expensive systems confined to optical tables.
Now a team led by Professor Tobias J. Kippenberg at EPFL has brought them onto a photonic chip. Publishing in Nature, the researchers report the first integrated ultrafast laser to rival tabletop femtosecond lasers, delivering 1.05 nanojoules in pulses as short as 147 femtoseconds.
Photonic chips guide and process light in microscopic channels called waveguides patterned on a wafer, similar to how electronic microchips route electricity. Already widely used in telecommunications, photonic chips have miniaturized complex functions that once required much larger systems.
‘Don’t scare the cat!’ Engineers find smarter way to measure quantum systems
UNSW Sydney engineers have riffed on the famous Schrödinger’s cat analogy to demonstrate a more efficient way to eliminate errors in quantum computing.
“Imagine you’re trying to find your cat hiding in one of eight identical cardboard boxes, in a dark and noisy room,” says UNSW Scientia Professor Andrea Morello.
“You are not allowed to enter the room—opening the door may kill the cat. What is the optimal strategy to find out where it’s hiding? Our team of quantum researchers have found an answer to this problem, and it might be an important milestone on the road to building a quantum computer.”