World’s first 2D, non-silicon computer developed | Penn State University
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In a world first, a team led by researchers at Penn State used two-dimensional materials, which are only an atom thick and retain their properties at that scale, unlike silicon, to develop a computer capable of simple operations. The advancement, published in Nature, represents a major leap toward the realization of thinner, faster and more energy-efficient electronics, the researchers said.
  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.eeEnglish
    3·
    12 hours ago

    That’s very cool, but does anyone else think the title image is AI generated? Neither image nor caption seem to sit right, nor fit together.

    Is the ‘caption’ actually (derived from) a prompt?

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
    36·
    2 days ago

    A promising start, but a thousand transistors at 25 kilohertz puts it where silicon tech was 60 years ago, so they’ve a long, long way to go.

    If it scales, they can use modern tech and know-how to accelerate their progress and they can get funding, maybe this will be viable in a decade or so.

    • SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org
      8·
      2 days ago

      I was thinking more about the availability of “molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide” opposed to silicon, they don’t sound exactly like Home Depot stuff.

      • palordrolap@fedia.io
        8·
        2 days ago

        Fair point. From what I can tell, refined tungsten is actually an order of magnitude cheaper(!) than refined silicon, but molybdenum is over two orders or magnitude more expensive. ~300USD per ton, ~2000USD per ton and ~60000USD per ton respectively.

        I assume that if this got up to scale industrially, savings could be made by recycling high purity molybdenum waste, but yes, it’s not going to be cheap.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      A promising start, but a thousand transistors at 25 kilohertz puts it where silicon tech was 60 years ago, so they’ve a long, long way to go.

      If you’re talking about the desire to replace today’s modern CPUs, sure. However, in the world of electronics there are lots and lots of support electronics and ICs that run way slower than 25kHz. All of this assumes the technology can scale for cost effective manufacturing yields at this current speed. If its both expensive AND slow, it will have far fewer use cases.

      • palordrolap@fedia.io
        9·
        2 days ago

        The article seems to imply that the intention is to replace silicon entirely, but agreed, there might be niches where it can replace silicon even if full replacement might be unrealistic.