China Just Made the World's Fastest Transistor and It Is Not Made of Silicon
China Just Made the World's Fastest Transistor and It Is Not Made of Silicon
The new transistor runs 40% faster and uses less power.
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“Rather than silicon, the Peking University team built their transistor using [lab-grown] bismuth oxyselenide (Bi₂O₂Se) for the channel, and bismuth selenite oxide (Bi₂SeO₅) as the gate material.
These materials are part of a class known as two-dimensional semiconductors — atomically thin sheets with exceptional electrical properties. Bismuth oxyselenide, in particular, offers something silicon struggles with at ultra-small sizes: speed.”
My hero!
But where is the catch ?
There is none. It's bismuth as usual.
Badum tss
The catch is in justifying spending the resources needed to take this from the lab to mass production. No company is willing to invest hundreds of billions that would be needed when they can keep squeezing a bit more performance out of silicon at a lower investment. That's why this sort of stuff requires state level funding, and now that US is cutting China off from western chips, there's a really big incentive to provide that sort of funding.