According to the article fabrication seems to have a very low yield. That will generally make it difficult for consumer products.
I would generally assume first use would be in locations were super conductors are already used today. E. g. in MRI machines which would then not require cooling anymore and therefore could be more compact, quieter and consuming much less energy.
Other prime fields for super conductors are energy transportation from the energy producers to the consumers.
Application in electronics seems difficult for me as the material is not used stand alone there and therefore new fabrication processes and designs will be needed. After all it will not work to use this material to replace silicon transistors as our transistor designs are relying on the semiconductor nature of silicone and a superconductor cannot follow this by definition. Maybe the connections between transistors can be replaced, but I am not sure where most of the heat generation happens. If I remember my physics studies correctly there is also significant energy loss within the transistor and that would still mean that the cpu would heat up. This would be now especially critical as the temperature must not exceed the temperature where the material loses super conductivity as this would most likely lead to a fast melt down of the device.
Assuming it’s real, the material takes about as much current as a wet noodle. So no giant magnets for you. Maybe some low-current application like sensors? (SQUID etc.)
A superconductor would completely change how we handle electricity. It’s like a cheat code almost. I’d say most of our current electric infrastructure only exists because of the limitations of our non-superconducting materials.
So would this mean that cpus would not generate heat?
Not quite. Charges undergoing acceleration and state transitions still generate EM radiation, and still lose energy. In a semiconductor, charges start moving, stop moving, and change direction all the time. So that form of energy loss & heat generation will continue.
In addition, the semiconductor itself is still a semiconductor, not a superconductor. To take advantage of the ability of a semiconductor to hold charges in specific states, there will be some heat losses.
But, a practical superconductor could be used to form all the interconnects in a PC board or the surface of a silicon chip device, providing an efficiency improvement.
So would this mean that cpus would not generate heat?
Would smartphone battery life skyrocket?
Can someone breakdown how this would affect computing?
According to the article fabrication seems to have a very low yield. That will generally make it difficult for consumer products.
I would generally assume first use would be in locations were super conductors are already used today. E. g. in MRI machines which would then not require cooling anymore and therefore could be more compact, quieter and consuming much less energy.
Other prime fields for super conductors are energy transportation from the energy producers to the consumers.
Application in electronics seems difficult for me as the material is not used stand alone there and therefore new fabrication processes and designs will be needed. After all it will not work to use this material to replace silicon transistors as our transistor designs are relying on the semiconductor nature of silicone and a superconductor cannot follow this by definition. Maybe the connections between transistors can be replaced, but I am not sure where most of the heat generation happens. If I remember my physics studies correctly there is also significant energy loss within the transistor and that would still mean that the cpu would heat up. This would be now especially critical as the temperature must not exceed the temperature where the material loses super conductivity as this would most likely lead to a fast melt down of the device.
Assuming it’s real, the material takes about as much current as a wet noodle. So no giant magnets for you. Maybe some low-current application like sensors? (SQUID etc.)
Don’t the current quantum computers also rely on superconducting materials that need to be kept sort cold?
A superconductor would completely change how we handle electricity. It’s like a cheat code almost. I’d say most of our current electric infrastructure only exists because of the limitations of our non-superconducting materials.
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Not quite. Charges undergoing acceleration and state transitions still generate EM radiation, and still lose energy. In a semiconductor, charges start moving, stop moving, and change direction all the time. So that form of energy loss & heat generation will continue.
In addition, the semiconductor itself is still a semiconductor, not a superconductor. To take advantage of the ability of a semiconductor to hold charges in specific states, there will be some heat losses.
But, a practical superconductor could be used to form all the interconnects in a PC board or the surface of a silicon chip device, providing an efficiency improvement.
At the moment, Andrew Cole on Twitter seems to be a good person to follow for breakdowns and thoughts: https://nitter.net/Andercot
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