Graphene ‘Nano-Origami’ Could Take Us Past the End of Moore’s Law

Graphene ‘Nano-Origami’ Could Take Us Past the End of Moore’s Law(singularityhub.com)

50 points by squid_demon 5 years ago | 21 comments

drannex 5 years ago |

As with anything that has to do with Graphene: Fantastic, happy to hear, but let's see how it goes with more testing and if it's manufacturable. I haven't seen a successful long-term application yet and they've been talking about graphene for twenty years.

I'm sure great things are happening in the field, and many wonderful ideas and discoveries have been made — but statements such as "take us past Moores law" requires manufacturing, and I haven't seen anything to say that this is possible albeit I am ever hopeful for the day that it is.

vimacs2 5 years ago | |

I keep hearing this sentiment but it's simply not true. They are already using graphene in consumer battery tech and with the recent invention of the "flash graphene" manufacturing process, production is going to ramp up significantly.

piokoch 5 years ago | |

Graphene manufacturing was not needed as our best ~5nm chips could use copper wires to transfer electricity. I suppose the ones that are on R&D now (3, maybe 2 nm) also use copper (that's my guess only). But going smaller will require something better (meaning less resistant on such scale), so maybe Graphene will be back in the game.

ben_w 5 years ago | | |

At that scale, is it even useful to still call it “graphene”? 3nm is only 21 carbon atom diameters. How much of its desirable properties come from bulk effects? (Genuinely curious, I’m not qualified in chemistry).

MayeulC 5 years ago | | |

> our best ~5nm chips could use copper wires to transfer electricity

I thought Aluminium and titanium were used in the lower interconnect layers, but according to [1] you are right.

The tech mentioned in the article is supposedly useful for transistors, not necessarily interconnect though. I guess that would be useful for going beyond planar processes. But at some point our current architectures are already severely limited regarding TDP anyway, so unless you can afford using only 10% of your chips, an architecture revolution is overdue IMO.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnect_(integrated_circu...

nxpnsv 5 years ago | |

I just think people are too much in a hurry with results. With these things, the lag between discovery to commercial viability is decades, not months...

Zenst 5 years ago | | |

Agreed and flying cars taught me this over several decades, as they have many others if they think about it. The valley between in the lab/prototype and commercial viable/practical is long and wide in some science.

junon 5 years ago | | |

That's not really the argument though. I would wager GP is more lamenting the writing style and "hype" surrounding certain tech, which causes widespread misinformation in the longer term, instead of reporting accurately and keeping scientific literature concise and accurate.

yortpyperty 5 years ago | | |

Agreed, it's the quick growth mentality that doesn't apply to things like fundamental science.

dekhn 5 years ago | |

This applies to fusion, genomics for precision med, and quantum computing as well. Hopeful to see a successful outcome, tired of 20+ years of unrealistic claims.

mpweiher 5 years ago |

Isn't the more tangible problem the end of Dennard scaling?

As in: Moore's law is still giving you more transistors, but you can't actually turn them all on, and they aren't getting faster, so no free lunch.

(Which of course is why the Apple M1 is so significantly ahead, at least of Intel)

karmakaze 5 years ago |

I'm glad it's only about 1000x faster, if it were millions or billions of times faster it could be disruptive in a world destabilizing way.

mehphp 5 years ago | |

I'm assuming because it would able to break current cryptography?

emkoemko 5 years ago | | |

then just make the cryptography 10000x harder then now? no?

cutler 5 years ago |

The great Graphene Promise recycled.