News High-Efficiency Superconducting Diode Could Change Chips Forever

[Admin]

A research team with MIT has unveiled a functional superconducting diode design that enables never-before-seen efficiencies and that's easily manufacturable, opening up the door for more power-efficient electronics.

High-Efficiency Superconducting Diode Could Change Chips Forever : Read more

 

[Integr8d]

”But science happens everywhere, all the time”

slowly waves hand*

”…Science.”

 

[InvalidError]

its superconducting diode is robust, and is able to operate over a wide temperature range

Unless that "wide temperature range" goes to at least 200K, it won't have many uses beyond applications that already use superconductors.

 

[SpecialSauce13]

Oof. Imagine being a writer who posts an article a day after it was discovered that this super conductor was a scam.

 

[bit_user]

Oof. Imagine being a writer who posts an article a day after it was discovered that this super conductor was a scam.

Maybe it was a fun ride? It got us talking and I learned a couple things. It generated clicks for the website, during the summer doldrums.

Maybe he'll be a bit more cautious, next time, but what's working against that is some competitive & time pressure to try and stay on top of the story before it becomes old news.

In the end, I'm left feeling that it's not too much different than covering the tech rumor mill. At least, in that case, we all hopefully know that any rumor or leak has a reasonable chance of being wrong.

 

[thestryker]

Oof. Imagine being a writer who posts an article a day after it was discovered that this super conductor was a scam.

Source?

 

[bill001g]

Source?

Looks like a drive by user who only reads the headlines but he might just be premature in his statement. There is a article on this site that talks about a video out a university in china that is fake. The original claims from korea are still being tested by others.
This is just a science version of all the garbage you see on social media where some people can not resist posting false content.

 

[thestryker]

Looks like a drive by user who only reads the headlines but he might just be premature in his statement. There is a article on this site that talks about a video out a university in china that is fake. The original claims from korea are still being tested by others.
This is just a science version of all the garbage you see on social media where some people can not resist posting false content.

Yeah this article has literally nothing to do with the LK-99 stuff that's been everywhere.

 

[Dikinbaus]

FTFA:
Diodes are a crucial part of any chip, and are an integral part of a circuit's design. While transistors are used to amplify input signals from low resistance circuits to high resistance circuits within the chip, diodes are usually responsible for converting alternate current (AC) to direct current (DC).


This is gibberish. Generally, only power conversion chips are likely to incorporate diodes as part of their function. Other chips might might use them for protection of the I/O pads but that's about it. Even fewer chips will connect in any way to AC. Referring to a circuit as high or low resistance is almost never appropriate.

The article was clearly written by someone with no knowledge of chip design: perhaps ChatGPT.

 

[bit_user]

FTFA:
Diodes are a crucial part of any chip, and are an integral part of a circuit's design. While transistors are used to amplify input signals from low resistance circuits to high resistance circuits within the chip, diodes are usually responsible for converting alternate current (AC) to direct current (DC).


This is gibberish. Generally, only power conversion chips are likely to incorporate diodes as part of their function. Other chips might might use them for protection of the I/O pads but that's about it. Even fewer chips will connect in any way to AC. Referring to a circuit as high or low resistance is almost never appropriate.

The article was clearly written by someone with no knowledge of chip design: perhaps ChatGPT.

I pretty much thought so, but I had to actually look up schematics on CMOS gates, to be sure none of them included any diodes.

I would agree the author doesn't have sufficient knowledge of electronics and probably pulled the descriptions out of wikipedia or somewhere, but I'm pretty sure ChatGPT wasn't involved.

Given the relationship diodes have to transistors, is it plausible that this could be a precursor to possible improvements in transistor efficiency?

 

[InvalidError]

I pretty much thought so, but I had to actually look up schematics on CMOS gates, to be sure none of them included any diodes.

Every planar and finned CMOS transistor has an intrinsic body diode simply due to how the source, drain and channel lie on the silicon substrate. This parasitic diode is often use in medium-low power electronics to clamp back-EMF from the load back to the supply rail. In higher-power applications, it is usually supplemented by external diodes to reduce the amount of energy dissipated in the MOSFET.

In logic, diodes don't get used much for anything besides OR-ing and even then, it is simpler to have an open-collector/drain zero a signal line being pulled high than diode OR-ing drivers into a line being pulled low. You need a driver and current source/sink to bring the line to the designated default state but open-collector/drain skips the diodes and gives you almost the entire voltage swing from GND to Vcc, no diode drops.

In (ultra-)low-power electronics like remotes, the input/output body diodes are sometimes used to power the micro-controller when buttons are pressed: the micro-controller is normally disconnected from +Vbat, buttons are pulled high to +Vbat by resistors and when a button is pressed, power back-feeds into Vcc through the buttons enough for the micro-controller to turn on the FET that connects +Vbat to Vcc, decodes the key press, blasts the IR code for the button and turns itself off again until the next key press.

 

[johnoth]

It really looks like Intel found out 2 generations ago.