bron@bronze.SGI.COM (Bron Campbell Nelson) (02/23/89)
Anyone out there know anything about the current state of research into ballistic transport transistors? I read several "popular science" style articles on the subject a few years back, but haven't heard anything from any respectable source. No doubt all the people that are actually doing the work can't talk about it, but can someone give me a general idea of where things stand and/or pointers to references? If I remember correctly, we're getting close to the point where ballistic effects can begin to be seen in GaAs (0.1microns), although we're still a long way away from the line widths needed for Si. Of course, my memory could easilly be off by an order of magnitude or more; who knows the real story? -- Bron Campbell Nelson bron@sgi.com or possibly ..!ames!sgi!bron
jwatts@hpihoah.HP.COM (Jon Watts) (02/25/89)
From bron@bronze.SGI.COM Wed Feb 22 14:39:35 1989 >Anyone out there know anything about the current state of research >into ballistic transport transistors? I read several "popular science" >style articles on the subject a few years back, but haven't heard >anything from any respectable source. No doubt all the people that >are actually doing the work can't talk about it, but can someone >give me a general idea of where things stand and/or pointers to references? The Feb. '89 issue of IEEE Micro has an intresting article about a quantum effect transistor that has been fabricated by Mark Reed and others (?) at Texas Instruments. Their device uses ballistic electron transport. The speeds and dimensions of the device are incredible. The base of the transistor is 100 angstroms (10E-8M or 0.01 microns) with and active region of 250 angstroms. The speed of the actual device connot be accurately measured due to the macroscopic contacts but they claim projected speed (through calculation) of 100 to 200 femtoseconds (0.0001 to 0.0002 nanoseconds).
w-colinp@microsoft.UUCP (Colin Plumb) (02/27/89)
jwatts@hpihoah.HP.COM (Jon Watts) wrote: > The speed of the actual device connot be accurately measured due to the > macroscopic contacts but they claim projected speed (through calculation) of > 100 to 200 femtoseconds (0.0001 to 0.0002 nanoseconds). Ug. I'm perfectly comfortable down to about 0.1 ns, but there my mind begins to booggle. 1 ns is 30 cm. This is 30 to 60 microns. I can't imagine a conventional processor that uses this (not that I don't expect someone will do it; I just can't visualise what it'll be like), but wow, what a DSP. Real-time video processing, anyone? -- -Colin (uunet!microsoft!w-colinp) "Don't listen to me. I never do."