A new breakthrough could lead to a new way to create transistors using crystals that would lower the power demand of processors, while at the same time making them more efficient. The crystal could lower the amount of required voltage to run a processor by 30 percent. The crystal is constructed from one layer of hafnium oxide and one layer of zirconium oxide stacked on top of it.
The find could lower the overall power requirements of processors by nearly 1/3, a leap in efficiency that would certainly make cryptocurrency mining more efficient, less resource-demanding as well.
New crystal could help transistors run on less power
From cosmosmagazine.com
2022-04-10 15:30:00
Imma Perfetto
Excerpt:
When we use our computers and phones, we usually aren’t thinking about the amount of energy they’re using. But as computers continue to grow smaller and more powerful, they require more and more energy to operate.
Now, a major breakthrough in the design of a transistor component – the tiny electrical switches that form the building blocks of computer chips – could significantly reduce their energy consumption without sacrificing speed, size, or performance.
A new study has shown that an engineered crystal – composed of a layered stack of hafnium oxide and zirconium oxide – can lower by approximately 30% the amount of voltage required to control transistors, and as a result the amount of energy a computer consumes.
The engineered crystal is used in a component of transistors known as a gate oxide – a thin layer of material that converts the applied voltage into an electric charge, which then switches the transistor on…
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