News CPUs Could Use 85 Percent Fewer Transistors With New Adaptive Tech

[Admin]

A team of Viennese researchers has developed what likely amounts to the future of classical computing: Intelligent transistors. By tapping into the element Germanium, these transistors are much more efficient and can reduce the number of transistors required for the same computational work by a staggering 85%.

CPUs Could Use 85 Percent Fewer Transistors With New Adaptive Tech : Read more

 

[Alex/AT]

There is always but one problem: cost. As silicon is ultimately widespread on the planet, the costs of obtaining, refining and using it are certainly times less.
Another story is that germanium was once used for transistors, at the very start of semiconductor era, and was found very thermal sensitive.
Nothing on this is elaborated, but those two are definite showstoppers that are to be considered before making any other progress statements.

 

[jkflipflop98]

Germanium is already used in every high-performance chip on Earth. It's a dopant used to make the "wells" for the electrons in the bulk silicon substrate itself. It's where the source pulls the electrons from.

 

[Deleted member 1353997]

Can't we already reduce the number of transistors used for arithmetic operations by using regular adders instead of carry-lookahead adders? Sure, the performance would suffer a lot, but it'd also consume less power.

 

[JWNoctis]

Any caveats wrt thermals, switching frequency, fabrication, and lifespan? Shame the paper is paywalled.

Real 1T SRAM alone - which this would enable - would have been pretty revolutionary all by itself.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

If this is real, I can gurantee that every semiconductor fab in the world will license it.

 

[hotaru.hino]

My only concern with this is how much error can this introduce?

Can't we already reduce the number of transistors used for arithmetic operations by using regular adders instead of carry-lookahead adders? Sure, the performance would suffer a lot, but it'd also consume less power.

There's likely processors designed this way when power consumption is more important than raw performance (MSP430's come to mind). But these aren't meant for anything remotely like running a typical personal computer. And if you do try to make this design run personal computer software, all that power saving will be for naught because of the amount of the time processor spent active.

 

[Bikki]

The only number shown is transitor count. We still need 2 other important factors which are transitor cost and transitor size with the added component.