Researchers get nanotube chips running at commercial speeds

Carbon nanotubes have a ton of promise, and we've seen a lot of prospective applications for the tech, but researchers at Stanford, working with Toshiba, have managed to demonstrate the first use of nanotubes in chips that run at commercially-viable speeds. The chip features 256 ring oscillators and packs over 11,000 transistors in just one hundredth of a square inch. When wired with the nanotubes and powered up, the chip ran at speeds between 800MHz and 1.06GHz -- not desktop speeds, to be sure, but still promising. The team says that while the experiment bodes well for the future, we shouldn't expect any direct applications yet -- but you know we're dreaming of tiny implantable supercomputers anyway.

[CannonGod @ Jan 31st 2008 7:53AM]

Definitely showing future promise. The road to solid state just got a little denser

[j_g_puff @ Jan 31st 2008 7:55AM]

But what exactly did they use the nanotubes for? Interconnects, presumably? It's not necessarily a problem that they only run at ~1GHz. By far the largest sector of the processor market is embedded processing, and there the clock speeds are rarely above 1GHz. This tech can have huge applications there way before it makes its way into desktop processors.

I suspect the major problem will be large scale manufacture - it's one thing to make some silicon in a lab, but a totally different thing to produce it for

[j_g_puff @ Jan 31st 2008 7:58AM]

...less than

[j_g_puff @ Jan 31st 2008 7:59AM]

..10 dollars.

(Why does it keep cutting off the last few words of my posts?)

[Nikkoli @ Jan 31st 2008 8:41AM]

Its because engadget is like a drug, and that my friend is your addiction--always something missing from that 'first time'; just enough to keep you coming back for more.

[Onetruebill @ Jan 31st 2008 12:42PM]

We all took a secret vote last week and decided to cut off the end of all of your posts.

OR

It is a plot involving Apple, Sony and Microsoft...
I don't think I need to say any more.

this message posted on a Sony Vaio running Mac Os 10 under a Windows Vista shell.
(did I spoof that right?)

[qwho @ Jan 31st 2008 8:10AM]

yeah maybe HTC will build this into a new handset... 1.0ghz cellphone... except it will lack the necessary drivers and still will take 2 seconds to switch from portait to landscape mode...

[Indeed @ Jan 31st 2008 8:13AM]

yeah, but how efficient is it? MHz alone don't mean much

[Nikkoli @ Jan 31st 2008 8:15AM]

I would be completely willing to drop from 3.0GHz, if it meant that I could have an implanted computer that responds to thoughts as it's imput source, and sends its audio and video directly to my optic and aural nerves. Add in a set of 4 MicroSD (what is in cellphones like the razer) slots behind the ear as 'disk drives'...



... yeah, I used to play a lot of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. It would still be cool though...

[elflaco @ Jan 31st 2008 11:08AM]

why only make it one way, your eyes and the rest of the data collected by your sense can be stored in the comp, you would have to compress the data though, how manat megapixels does the eye have, lol

[Tim Brown @ Jan 31st 2008 9:03AM]

Lets hope SkyNet does not pick up one this...

[Allen @ Jan 31st 2008 12:59PM]

Scryer's "Necessary thingies of the future:"

1. Carbon fiber must come down in price and be used to make cars at economical rates
2. Carbon nanotubes will be in our processors and cooling sinks
3. Renewable energy will be standard, and the carbon waste from burned materials like coal will be used as the "carbon" in carbon fiber and nanotubes.

Once those three things happen, we will be "in the future."

... and the whole point of this post was..... I dont know...