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Re:First claimed successful replication of LK-99 superconduc... by RugnirViking on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:07AM (#36954614)
consider that a big part of why we cant make better processors is because they get hot, and they get hot because of resistance. I'd say dramatically faster chips in smaller form factors (think enormous graphics card in your phone, most of the bulk in those is cooling) would be quite a revolution !
Re:First claimed successful replication of LK-99 superconduc... by ben_w on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:45AM (#36954822)
Depends on the details, as always.

I don't know the superconductivity mechanism here (does anyone?), but IIRC Cooper pairs in BCS theory can be separated by much larger gaps than the transistors in a modern CPU — hundreds, rather than single-digits, of nanometers.

Might make fully-3D processors much more viable though, from lack of heat dissipation; and if it does, that in turn might be able to make up for a coarser resolution.

Re:First claimed successful replication of LK-99 superconduc... by Kirby64 on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @08:47AM (#36955280)
Heat is a big factor, but part of limitations on speed really come from physical dimensions. At some point, speed of light travel becomes a limitation.

Also, the transistors themselves generate a lot of the heat... So you still have large amounts of heat to handle even if the interconnect traces are heatless.

Re:First claimed successful replication of LK-99 superconduc... by RugnirViking on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @09:25AM (#36955639)
> Heat is a big factor, but part of limitations on speed really come from physical dimensions.

undoubtably. We can't make things infinately fast. But being able to put the most powerful desktop processors and graphics cards we have today into a phone would definately be useful, not to mention laptops. It would also dramatically change how server farms work (their existance right now revolves around cooling, they could be so much more dense)

Re:First claimed successful replication of LK-99 superconduc... by jacquesm on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @08:55AM (#36955353)
The transistors create a lot of heat because the current carrying capacity of the interconnect is severely limited which increases the time to switch the transistor from off to on or vv. This puts the transistor into a resistive domain where it consumes power and that leads to heat. If you use a superconducting interconnect that transition time will drop sharply and that in turn will lead to less power used by the transistor.