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Diamond Processors!

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Zim2411

Member
Joined
Jan 23, 2003
A company called Gemesis has found a way to grow diamonds.

Why do you care? Why is this under CPUs?!

Diamond, it turns out, is a geek's best friend. Not only is it the hardest substance known, it also has the highest thermal conductivity - tremendous heat can pass through it without causing damage. Today's speedy microprocessors run hot - at upwards of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, they can't go much faster without failing. Diamond microchips, on the other hand, could handle much higher temperatures, allowing them to run at speeds that would liquefy ordinary silicon. But manufacturers have been loath even to consider using the precious material, because it has never been possible to produce large diamond wafers affordably. With the arrival of Gemesis, the Florida-based company, and Apollo Diamond, in Boston, that is changing. Both startups plan to use the diamond jewelry business to finance their attempt to reshape the semiconducting world.

Link to full article
 
w00tage, baby! that'll satisfy the bling-bling requirement! lol
yeah, diamond can take on lots of heat because it is Carbon - the space shuttle uses carbon (matrix and other forms of) panels to protect the weak aluminum underneath from the thousand-something degree plasma nuking the ship on re-entry - - - the Apollo and all those "Pod" rockets used...what was it...it was...that black crystal...what is it called...the stuff that like, some meso-american temples were covered in...lol

Sounds cool - - if it is indeed cheap... dont ya'll think one could use some sort of enzyme or protein or something to make diamonds? That would indeed be cheap and pretty darn fast too! Can't wait to see if some chip co ever uses diamonds
 
I question if some form of "cubic zirconia" can compete in price feasibility with silicon. :eh?: I severely doubt this is anything we will ever see.
 
Apollo and all those "Pod" rockets used...what was it...it was...that black crystal...what is it called...the stuff that like, some meso-american temples were covered in...lol

[/B]

Obsidian?
 
It sounds nifty, but they're going to face serious design challenges. Silicon is actually one of the more heat-tolerant components of a CPU. Its melting point is 1414 C. That's a fair amount higher than Aluminum (660 C) or Copper (1085 C), which are used for the metal interconnects. So they need to find some metal alloy that is both highly conductive and very heat resistant.

Plus if they plan to use diamond as the substrate (upon which the transistors are built) they need to find some way to dope very densely packed Carbon so that it has semiconducting properties. I suppose they could just use diamond as an insulating layer, but I'm not sure what that would get you that glass doesn't.
 
NookieN... how did you get so smart?

Seems like this is more for servers then for consumers.
 
Yeah it definitely has important scientific and industrial applications. I'm a little skeptical that they can make it cheaper than silicon-based parts for consumer devices though.


I should make a clarification in my first post: diamond _is_ a semiconductor, but I think doping such a densely packed material to get N and P wells would be challenging. Then again maybe they'll finally come up with something better than CMOS.
 
NookieN said:
I suppose they could just use diamond as an insulating layer, but I'm not sure what that would get you that glass doesn't.

Vastly higher thermal conductivity.

SOI on diamond...

Spread the heat from hotspots on the CPU die better.

Until they start making 300mm wafers of it though, I don't see much use.
 
ahh de'biers(however you spell it) keeps diamond prices up by warehousing the large bulk they dig up. in reality diamonds are far more numerous than they would like to admit but they do own 90% of the diamond mines on earth. Also they can make low grade diamonds for certain tasks such as diamond coated blades on concrete/metal saws.
 
Diamonds have always been a 'priceless' item, in terms of luxury, and personal value, simply because it is so shiny, and a ******* company likes to keep the quantity amongst the rich few, and the poor even fewer. It is going to be something like artificial diamonds (whose chemical compounds are identical to true diamond, and at the same time, not) that the industry needs for a purpose other than being pretty for it to be used as such.

As far as the glass over diamond thing - glass doesn't exactly have a high melting point.

And I read about the Gemesis project in Wired or some magazine like that that is pro-Mac (chokes). Either way, it couldn't hurt to have a 'rare' molecule as an option for manufacture.

-Frank

PS. Anyone care for a diamond waterblock?
 
There is a research team from the US government actually working on the N&P, suposedly they just had a good breakthrough and only have a couple more hurdles to go. Gemesis is saying they expect to have full size wafers ready for developers in just a couple of years. If they can break though all the challenges it would be amazing to have cpu's of diamond. The cost would be worth it to leave your athlon 2Thz running while you take the heatsink off to marvel and the pretty sparkle.
 
Why diamond wafers? I didnt read this thread too carefuly, but has anybody thought of diamond heat-spreaders?
 
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Diamond wafers to sustain the heat that the die will produce. Indeed they will more than likely soon manufacture diamond "goop" and make it more available for cooling needs. But i am sure that none of that will happen till they have perfected the cheapest method.

Also in that article, it kinda mentions that in order to continue to go faster with CPU's, a different material other than silicon will have to be used.

Thats my wrap on the subject.
 
Sorry to ruin your little sparkly dreams but these are more likely to be made on Black Diamonds since they conduct heat better and are cheaper to produce. Think of the mounting pressures we can get on these MMMM 1000lbs :)
 
wow cool .... first Artic silver then artic ceramique maybe ARTIC diamond in the future
 
well I believe that the space shuttle's heat conducting blocks aren't carbon, but they are ceramic blocks made from silica-sand only found in Brazil. So basically the same product as the chip wafers are nowadays.

resilliancy to heat is one thing, but the fact that diamond can pass through-heat is great. Creamics are one of the highest grade for protecting from heat, but are bad heat conductors.
If you have a combination of the two, I think it's the best hat we will see with the current technology, but the question is if it's financially feasible to produce and research.
 
It's very easy to make diamonds these days, but most labs that manufacture them produce them in small quantities and sell them for the price of natural diamonds in order to keep the price of diamonds from dropping dramatically. Maybe processors will the the end of expensive jewelry ;)
 
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