Shiny Doom Forum

Trool · Good Karma Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 1486

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=3&u=/nm/20040128/sc_nm/science_matter_dc
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.'

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Mogri · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 12:58 pm Post subject:

Potential room-temperature superconductor... OOOoooo Smile

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"A club without the right direction, is a misguided stick."
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rklee · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 11:11 am Post subject:

Just wondering... you guys know any good applications to room temperature superconductors? I guess it would be good for any conductance but... I was just thinking.. one major drawback right now of fusion power plants is the magnetic field required to contain the plasma. Mainly it's the cost of the super conductor magnetic field generators that make it so expensive right now. Perhaps with room temperature ones it'd be cheaper?
Could they make interconnections in computer circuits with these if they are stable in room temperature? IF no heat loss... we could get much faster processors...
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"My Heart Is In the Work" - Andrew Carnegie

Mogri · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 7:55 pm Post subject:

I thought a lot of the delay in processors right now is the time of the transitition state in the semiconductor, which superconductors wouldn't really help. I'd imaging you could speed up communications between components on a board, or even within distinct seperations in a processor, but that'd be many many years before it enters even the server market.
_________________
"A club without the right direction, is a misguided stick."
-- Master Wham

rklee · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 8:35 am Post subject:

I heard that one of the big drawbacks is the interconnects. They just can't make them small enough and conductive enough (without shorting when the copper difuses). I thought most of the heat came from the poor interconnections...
An intel person came to talk to my class two years ago. She was a materials engineer and she basically worked on interconnections so that's really all I know about. I think she's on the team working on the pentium '7'. She said that the processor can be faster but 2 main problems...the interconnects become a bottleneck and most definately the heat.
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"My Heart Is In the Work" - Andrew Carnegie