Pencil Lead's Hot Cousin
Was reading Inside Tech today and they state that MIT researchers have possibly finally discovered a use for this substance. For those who do not know what graphene is I recommend you click/read this (I did). This substance is, on a microscopic and somewhat chemical level, almost identical to pencil lead. MIT has discovered that they can use this substance as a multiplier on transistors. The multiplier is the thing that gives us clock (mhz, ghz) for our CPUs. MIT states graphene does not create all the interference that the currently used substance does. That interference has to be cleaned up in real time by the system which eats up lots of system throughput/cylces thus making our processors run a lot slower than they theoretically could. So in theory, as stated by MIT, the use of Graphene could lead us to 500ghz-1000ghz processors on a Single Core.
Now here is the bad news. With current production abilities grapheen costs $1000 dollars for an amount equivalent to a strand of hair. That is one hell of a price for something that is in essence just pencil lead. MIT hopes that when/if commercial production begins the price of it will come down substantially.
One last tidbit of what I consider good news. MIT expects to have a working 500ghz-1000ghz processor within the next 2-3 years. What that means for you and me (the consumers) has yet to be revealed. Would the government even allow us to have that kind of processing power?
One neat thing I think is; The Pencil: One of man’s initial ways of keeping records and processing math/information will now possibly become the greatest/fastest processor in man’s ever evolving technology. Pencil Lead people. Awesome.
And for the good old End of the World Scenario. This will definitely lead to SKYNET. I called it. Or pleasure bots. Whichever comes first. Both could also lead to the end of the world. Well at least the end of man since procreation as it was originally intended would be stifled.
– INSIDE TECH – <MIT Graphene Multiplier May Push CPUs to 1,000 GHz>
