To summarize a few bits of the article, in case anyone else was wondering why graphene over silicon was better and if it was better why not graphene over silicon until now.
Why
- “ten times the performance and low consumption of power”
- “two hundred times stronger than steel” “unmatched compared to silicon”
- “thermal and electrical conductivity is better than copper”
- “lightweight, measuring less than one milligram per square meter”
Why not
- “Graphene-based chips are complicated to produce and are highly expensive to create”
Was silicon a problem here? isn’t China major exporter of high quality sand used in chip making?
We’re now approaching limits of what you can squeeze out of silicon, and the returns are diminishing rapidly at this point. On the other hand, even a naive implementation of transistors on a substrate like graphene could make silicon look like vacuum tubes with lots of room to grow in the future. If this works it’s going to be a game changer that will allow China to leapfrog western chip industry.
Yeah, i was more meaning what silicon have to do with monopoly in particular, since that wasn’t ever lacking. Nevermind, probably i just read the headline weirdly.
I do get that making qualitative leap in technology will reset the playing field, especially that afaik the chokepoint here is the chip making technology, so developing the graphene chips will make that point nonexistent.
PS. Don’t tell that to Tom Clancy, he probably still think everyone except USA is still using vacuum tubes :D Or would if he was alive anyway.
Yeah, I’m really excited to see how this develops. Since these chips have already shown to work by IBM, it’s really just a matter of bringing the cost down. If China is willing to pour money into this tech then it’s just a matter of time.
