The Next Generation is made of Graphene.

[babcat]

Hello everyone,

An invention that fascinates me is graphene. Scientist have learned how to make transistors from this substance. These transistors can switch at rates of hundreds of gigahertz or faster. The first small chips with dozens of transistors already on the market. In addition with this technology more transistors could be packed into a chip and less power would be utilized. I really think the next generation of consoles should utilize this material. Just imagine instead of a 10 fold leap in power there could be a hundredfold leap empower.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Dozens...

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Methinks before this makes it to the next generation of mass market budget conscious gaming console, it will have to go through, I dunno... R&D cycles proving high transistor count fabrication techniques, interconnect techniques, etc, then on to premium cost supercomputer and high performance/size/power applications (cost no object military mobile devices, etc.), then premium cost high performance PC's and consumer mobile devices, then to mainstream devices like budget PC's and gaming consoles.

But who know... maybe I'm horribly wrong.

 

[Inuhanyou]

We have to make sure its tested appropriately before it makes its way into any consumer level device

 

[3dilettante]

An invention that fascinates me is graphene. Scientist have learned how to make transistors from this substance. These transistors can switch at rates of hundreds of gigahertz or faster.

This is nice, but not as nice as it might seem on the face of it.
Silicon transistors in isolation can be driven between 140-250 GHz, whereas graphene ones could go as high as 420.

Graphene can outpace silicon in isolation, and potentially edge out other high-frequency semiconductors that are used for signaling applications or might be the next materials used for 10nm or below.
Just as silicon transistors wind up twitching 25x slower when put into actual circuits, graphene performance is similarly brought down.
To top it off, graphene transistors are by some measures not very good transistors in terms of power consumption and leakage, at least as they are most commonly constructed.

The level of integration is essentially a factor of a billion short of where it needs to be, and the economics are currently many orders of magnitude worse.
I believe that future consoles, if they make them, should use whatever technology is economical at that time, not a preordained favorite.

 

[Grall]

Graphene consoles are 15-20 years off easily - if there will ever be such a thing. As Dilettante mentions, integration is horribly lacking and costs astronomical right now. It's hard enough just to make a sheet of graphene of any size right now (and the ones made tend to be really small), and anything approaching the 400mm silicon wafers in common use today are just pure science fiction right now. Then we have to create complex circuits in that graphene, on the order of tens of billions of transistors (since we're already in single figure numbers right now). That's also an unknown how that would be accomplished, except maybe on a theoretical level.

It's interesting tech for sure, but there's no way to predict if it's ever going to pay off.

 

[rpg.314]

This is nice, but not as nice as it might seem on the face of it.
Silicon transistors in isolation can be driven between 140-250 GHz, whereas graphene ones could go as high as 420.

Graphene can outpace silicon in isolation, and potentially edge out other high-frequency semiconductors that are used for signaling applications or might be the next materials used for 10nm or below.
Just as silicon transistors wind up twitching 25x slower when put into actual circuits, graphene performance is similarly brought down.
To top it off, graphene transistors are by some measures not very good transistors in terms of power consumption and leakage, at least as they are most commonly constructed.

The level of integration is essentially a factor of a billion short of where it needs to be, and the economics are currently many orders of magnitude worse.
I believe that future consoles, if they make them, should use whatever technology is economical at that time, not a preordained favorite.

Graphene is unlikely to se useful for transistors. It has no bandgap, so it cannot turn off. You have to use multiple layers to make FETs, but that comes with it's own tolerance problems.