Samsung claims a ‘Massive’ Graphene Wafer breakthrough – Begins Prototype production of gFETs ....

wccftech.com ^ | 12:16 PM - 6 Apr 2014 | Syed Muhammad Usman Pirzada

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Graphene is slated as the major breakthrough of this century. Infact it could very well propel the semiconductor a couple of decades easily (compared to the performance trend via Moore’s law ). Graphene transistors are more than capable of being clocked at 500Ghz so you get the idea of what Samsung is claiming to have achieved: a replicateable production process of Graphene nodes.

Graphene.

Experimental gFET Graphene Production – Scientific breakthrough of this century to be used in CPUs* of wearable devices

OK, I admit, I was being slightly sarcastic when I wrote the headline. It seems sort of ironic that if Samsung’s claims turn out to be true then the first Graphene processors will be in future wearable devices instead of lets say, desktop computers. Of course, Samsung can be forgiven for saying this considering its a primarily mobile company after all, but it still stings to a PC Enthusiast like me. Graphene, aka the miracle material of the century, to be used in future smart watches; seems like an extract from Douglas Adam’s Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Anyways, enough of my rant. On with the specifics.

This breakthrough was claimed at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. Basically they used a common silicon wafer with Germanium substrate to manufacture a mono layer mono crystal Graphene impression on top of it and then remove the silicon wafer (and germanium) from below. The silicon wafer can then be reused which is pretty great. Also since the Graphene is removed from the germanium using a completely dry process the Graphene is completely wrinkle free which basically means that the construction of the crystal is completely clean and low in defects. Since both the germanium substrate and silicon wafer can now be reused ( in previously known production processes the germanium substrate had to be burned off) it will exponentially increase, mass production capabilities. Samsung has started production of Graphene Field Effect Transistors (gFET)

* by CPUs I mean SoCs, but that didn’t sound so poetic up there.

[DManA]

I searched IBM and graphene. The latest seems to be over a year ago:

http://www.graphene-info.com/tags/graphene-companies/ibm

[SunkenCiv]

Weeeellll, 500Ghz, pretty nice.

[Sherman Logan]

I would appreciate it if somebody more knowledgeable than me (a very large group) could explain how much this would speed processing up relative to existing systems.

[ckilmer]

Can someone help me to understand the significance of this advance if it works—both in terms of current technology and what kind of work this speed up will enable. (presumably this does not enable quantum computer speeds.)

for example to understand the meaning of 500 GHz ....correct me if I’m wrong — are we talking about typical desktops operating at about 4-5 GHz?
.....................
according to this article

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/157337-the-haswell-paradox-the-best-cpu-in-the-world-unless-youre-a-pc-enthusiast

As our hardware analyst mentioned in his Haswell review, Intel’s new parts struggle to get past 4.5GHz on air, while Ivy Bridge could reliably hit 4.7GHz, with some parts reaching 4.9GHz. In reality, the picture is even muddier than that: Early reports suggest that some Haswell chips can only reach 4.3GHz, while others can get to 4.7GHz or higher (again, on air).

[Ray76]

The diamond is a quantum chip at USC, not IBm

[William of Barsoom]

Gasp! This is a terrible, frightening event!

Carbon is POISONOUS!! All industrial use of carbon was well on it’s way to being properly suppressed as the awful Enemy of Nature that it is!!

STOP BIG CARBON FROM DESTROYING THE EARFF!!

(I can’t wait to hear some enviro say this seriously.)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ROFL.

I have my zoom up high and could not figure out what that was,....had do drop down to make it out....LOL

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Later in the thread,...See above a bit,...there are some questions and requests for explanation for what this might mean in the future.

Want to take a crack at answering them.

We could have a good discussion .

[SunTzuWu]

Think superconductor. Low resistance, uses less power, less waste heat.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Science is equal opportunity....Samsung is no slouch....in manufacturing,.

[Bobalu]

If you had an 8-core CPU in your desktop machine and they were running at 500Ghz then your PC would qualify as a super-computer.

It could simulate the physics needed to do realistic real-time hi-res 3D-graphics without breaking a sweat. Your current PC would take weeks or months to generate a single frame.

It could do strange things like alter your image in real-time so that you could look and sound exactly like someone else on a live video chat.

It could handle simulations of nuclear devices.

If you could feed it the data it could monitor all US cell traffic in real-time and watch for keywords.

Creating the software to take advantage of such power would be the hardest part.

Just imagine 10,000 cores running at 500Ghz.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Was that your locale of origin....I’ve heard that you know!!!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I posted something recent;y ,...keyword Hitech.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well,.... cycle time on current CMOS circuitry ...tops out pretty much above 5 Mz.

IBM has a Powerserver that has the top cycle time.

This would do damage to all of the ...enthusiasts doing overclocking.

[Ray76]

Thanks

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

A link to Google Images :

Click here

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Turned up this link:

How to Save the Troubled Graphene Transistor

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

bunp

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See 36 and 37.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Too bad the NSA has dibs on the first years supply.