{"id":95543,"date":"2019-08-29T19:24:25","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T02:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/engineers-at-mit-and-analog-devices-have-created-the-first-fully-programmable-16-bit-carbon-nanotube-microprocessor"},"modified":"2019-08-29T19:24:25","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T02:24:25","slug":"engineers-at-mit-and-analog-devices-have-created-the-first-fully-programmable-16-bit-carbon-nanotube-microprocessor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/engineers-at-mit-and-analog-devices-have-created-the-first-fully-programmable-16-bit-carbon-nanotube-microprocessor","title":{"rendered":"Engineers at MIT and Analog Devices have created the first fully-programmable 16-bit carbon nanotube microprocessor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/engineers-at-mit-and-analog-devices-have-created-the-first-fully-programmable-16-bit-carbon-nanotube-microprocessor3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the most complex integration of carbon nanotube-based CMOS logic so far, with nearly 15,000 transistors, and it was done using technologies that have already been proven to work in a commercial chip-manufacturing facility. The processor, called RV16X-NANO, is a milestone in the development of beyond-silicon technologies, its inventors say.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike silicon transistors, nanotube devices can easily be made in multiple layers with dense 3D interconnections. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eri-summit.com\/\">Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency<\/a> is hoping this 3D aspect will lead to commercial carbon nanotube (<a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/nanoclast\/semiconductors\/devices\/first-3d-nanotube-and-rram-ics-come-out-of-foundry\">CNT) chips with the performance of today\u2019s cutting-edge silicon<\/a> but without the high design and manufacturing cost.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the same researchers created a modest <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tech-talk\/semiconductors\/devices\/first-computer-made-from-carbon-nanotubes-debuts\">one-bit, 178-transistor<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tech-talk\/semiconductors\/devices\/first-computer-made-from-carbon-nanotubes-debuts\"> processor<\/a> back in 2013. In contrast, the new one, which is based on the open source <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/semiconductors\/devices\/riscvs-opensource-architecture-shakes-up-chip-design\">RISC-V<\/a> instruction set, is capable of working with 16-bit data and 32-bit instructions. Naturally, the team, led by MIT assistant professor <a href=\"https:\/\/sense.mit.edu\/people\/max-shulaker\">Max Shulaker<\/a>, tested the chip by running a version of the obligatory \u201cHello, World!\u201d program. They reported the achievement this week in <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-019-1493-8\"><em>Nature<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s the most complex integration of carbon nanotube-based CMOS logic so far, with nearly 15,000 transistors, and it was done using technologies that have already been proven to work in a commercial chip-manufacturing facility. The processor, called RV16X-NANO, is a milestone in the development of beyond-silicon technologies, its inventors say. Unlike silicon transistors, nanotube devices [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}