News Superconductor Breakthrough Replicated, Twice

[InvalidError]

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's plenty of very significant (possibly even insurmountable) problems that will have to be worked out, before/if we ever see real, useful devices using JJs.

There already are some useful JJ devices, just not for conventional computing.

Modern chip manufacturing is hitting brick walls due to the size of individual silicon atoms. Trying to work with crystals that are 100+X bigger than individual Si atoms is bound to pose some rather quite serious challenges. No superconductor, no JJs.

My point was simply that the potential advantages of a real STP superconductor aren't just limited to the obvious one, namely, the removal of losses due to resistance.

And my point was that quantum effects on low-density cryogenic superconductors likely won't survive the transition to room temperature or high density.

If the funky cryogenic quantum stuff doesn't work at room temperature, then all that a room-temperature superconductor has left to look forward to is reducing ohmic losses in whatever is worth using it on.

 

[derekullo]

25 man Lich King also took me 99 attempts.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I don't know what is more embarassing.

The fact Tomshardware believed that Twitter account was real.

The fact that Twitter account now has to publicly say they are a parody account in response to Tomshardware believing it.

The fact that Tomshardware actually believed this material is superconducting.

Or the fact Tomshardware believed you could turn a ceramic material into wires for chips.

There aren't enough facepalms in the world for this article.

I'm not seeing any indication the twitter account is a parody account, where do you see him publicly stating that it is? Even if it was though, it doesn't really matter because the research in question (the Korean paper + subsequent simulation at Berkeley) is real (as in not parody/joking, although their results still need to be replicated).

And you can make wires from ceramics:
"[...] requirements for these varied applications were met in 3-micrometer-thick YBa2Cu3O7-δ films [...]" https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1124872
"Here we report a very high and reproducible JE in practical HTS wires based on a simple YBa2Cu3O7 (YBCO) superconductor formulation" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81559-z

YBCO is a ceramic: "YBa2Cu3O7−x was the first ceramic superconductor [...]" https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/ceramic-superconductors

We probably don't have proven, feasible methods of creating ceramic traces/conductors of the size/number/precision required for advanced ICs, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. And if a true room temperature superconductor were discovered, you're going to have a whole lot more people looking into ways that material can be grown and shaped.

Edit: but as others have pointed out, simply replacing the conductors in existing chip design with superconductors may not be the best way to take advantage of room temp SCs for computing.

 

[vehekos]

Most heat in a CPU is produced inside transistors, when transistors switch, so superconductors would not do much to reduce a CPU heat generation.

Superconductors would help reducing dissipation in the interconnectors between transistors, but at best would save 20% of the energy.

Superconductors instead would help conduct the heat out of the transistors, so the radiator is more efficient. Maybe radiators become unnecessary on laptops, or would not require fans. But that would be compensated by rising the frequency of the processor, so probably energy consumption would end being the same, at higher frequencies.

But a CPU that produces no heat cannot be achieved just by using superconductors

 

[JTWrenn]

Leakage comes from the extreme proximity between traces, I don't think superconductors will do anything about that and leakage

I don't think you get leakage if you don't have resistance but I could be wrong. It would likely change the way we do so much from a design stand point that I think it is very hard to know. That being said, it would at the very least reduce waste heat quite a bit.

 

[InvalidError]

I don't think you get leakage if you don't have resistance but I could be wrong.

Leakage between two traces only cares about three things: 1) distance 2) insulator and 3) voltage. Wherever you have two conductors separated by a non-ideal insulator, you will have ohmic leakage proportional to voltage. Once you get to 3nm, electron tunnelling becomes a significant concern with electrons starting to just teleport through whatever insulation is there. Intel's 14nm process has 4-6nm gate oxide thickness.

 

[cryoburner]

I'm pretty sure we could find uses for a material like this even if we can't form wires from it. I'm thinking we could conceivably use it for a maglev transport with only minimal refinement of the manufacturing process.
As to using it in CPUs/GPUs, I see that as being more far fetched. If we can use it or a related compound to make some kind of wires or bars, then it would probably be more useful in power transmission, motors, and other equipment than in chips. You would probably save much more energy that way.
Assuming you can make wires that is...

If the cost to produce a superconductive material were high, that could potentially limit its usefulness in devices requiring large quantities. A processor, on the other hand, might only need trace amounts to produce effective results.

 

[Eximo]

I want to see someone build a working transistor out of the currently known room temperature super conductors. Why not have a CPU under several thousand atmospheres worth of pressure?

 

[InvalidError]

I want to see someone build a working transistor out of the currently known room temperature super conductors. Why not have a CPU under several thousand atmospheres worth of pressure?

There are no known room-temperature semiconductors yet. LaH10 is the "hottest" known one and works at -23C under 170GPa (1700 1.7M atmospheres) of pressure.

A useful chip needs power and IO. Good luck getting all of your power and data through that without blowing seals on a regular basis. I suppose you could magnetically couple power and data through the pressure chamber as long as you make it of weakly/non-conductive materials to avoid inducing eddy currents that would directly heat it.

 

[Eximo]

Looks like there might be one more at 15C before we get into all the controversial ones, I remember first seeing this one on reddit:

In October 2020, room-temperature superconductivity at 288 K (at 15 °C) was reported in a carbonaceous sulfur hydride at very high pressure (267 GPa) triggered into crystallisation via green laser.[24][25] The paper has been retracted in 2022 as doubts were raised concerning the statistical methods used by the authors to derive the result.[26]

 

[JTWrenn]

Leakage between two traces only cares about three things: 1) distance 2) insulator and 3) voltage. Wherever you have two conductors separated by a non-ideal insulator, you will have ohmic leakage proportional to voltage. Once you get to 3nm, electron tunnelling becomes a significant concern with electrons starting to just teleport through whatever insulation is there. Intel's 14nm process has 4-6nm gate oxide thickness.

Sure but with no resistance you should have much lower voltage, right?

 

[InvalidError]

Sure but with no resistance you should have much lower voltage, right?

Operating voltages are primarily dictated by how the transistor junction operates, not wiring resistance. Modern CPUs operate at 900-1100mV because it still takes about 0.7V to activate CMOS junctions, you need headroom to accommodate voltage drops across channels and between cascaded logic stages, headroom for voltage to push gate charge/discharge current through, etc. so we get chips that need at least 800mV to run even in their slowest lowest-power state where wiring losses are already negligible.

Having superconductor traces between transistors doesn't change any of this by much, you'd need a transistor breakthrough beyond CMOS.

 

[TJ Hooker]

170GPa (1700 atmospheres) of pressure.

Atmospheric pressure is about 100 kPa, so that's 1.7 million atmospheres.

 

[InvalidError]

Atmospheric pressure is about 100 kPa, so that's 1.7 million atmospheres.

Oops, skipped a suffix

Yeah, we're in diamond anvil territory there.

 

[NinoPino]

Next up, room temperature fusion!

Already discovered! 😀