Future of microchip

Come to think of it – Silicon Valley without silicon! The jet-set speed with which R & D makes redundant things thought to be in the vanguard of technology is amazing.   

Scientists have now identified two possible replacements for silicon – carbon nanotubes and graphene. Carbon nanotubes are essentially single sheets of carbon rolled into tubes. They are placed in a soapy mixture in the form of ultra-small rectangles, allowing them to become soluble in water and adjust neatly into a chip array.

Chip designers today face a dilemma as their products today can’t get much faster without overheating. Carbon nanotubes might be the solution, as they have high thermal conductivity which can help carry away excess heat from microchips. This will make computers not just more efficient but also more environmentally friendly as less energy will be used up trying to cool them.

Graphene on the other hand, is a material discovered only in 2004. It is considered a wonder element of sorts, being only one atom thick. It is highly conductive and recently, IBM scientists produced a graphene microchip claimed to be 10,000 times faster than the silicon chips we use today. The main problem in producing graphene on a large scale is the cost. However, the price is expected to drop over the next 20 years as graphene will become a standard material in many household items,

In addition to new materials, the entire field of quantum computing is dedicated to taking processing power to unheralded levels. Information in ordinary computers is stored in the form of binary digits (bits), which can either be 1 or 0. The beauty of quantum bits (qubits) is that they can be both 1 and 0 at the same moment; this allows the chip to carry out a lot more processes in the same amount of time. The problem with this method is that qubits are fragile and can even small differences in their surroundings can remove them from their quantum state.

Racetrack memory is another innovation that promises to change the way computers store and handle information. Currently, flash memory is used to store information on most devices, from iPhones to SD cards; racetrack memory is being touted as its substitute. It relies on information being stored as magnetic patterns on tiny wires. There are 256 Racetrack cells on prototype chips at the moment. Each cell consists of magnetic wire, 60-240 nanometres wide and 15-20 nanometres thick. Electric pulses are then applied to the wires creating “domain walls” with “regions” between them. The regions are then passed over a magnetic read/write head which arranges the 0s and 1s into one direction. Experts claim this method could potentially read and write data hundreds of thousands of times faster than conventional methods.

Today, a vast number of applications are only being held back by processing power of microchips, as developers visions are restricted by the materials they have available to them. Firms are competing with one another to come up with the solution, undertaking large scale projects that will cost billions. If they succeed, the next technological revolution will be around the corner.