Come in Copper, Your Time's Up

From scenta RSS Feed - STEM:

Microchip experts are predicting the end of the use of connecting copper wire in circuits as it may soon limit computer speed. The progress that has seen computers get faster, more powerful, as well as smaller, may soon hit a stumbling block as the point of contact between parts of a chip - the copper interconnects - are becoming bottlenecks for data. Commenting on the state of technology, Dries Van Thourhout from Ghent University's Photonics Research Group said: "Copper-wire-interconnects place serious limitations on the performance of silicon integrated circuits. It is hard to transmit data down these interconnects in a sufficiently fast, power-efficient way. It is a problem of bandwidth and copper will not be able to cope with the processing power of tomorrow's microchips." A possible alternative may be the use of light in the form of optical interconnects. These have, experts claim, the potential to be far more efficient and less energy-hungry than existing copper interconnects.

Read the whole article