As our computers and other electronic devices become faster and more powerful, they are coming closer to an undeniable physical limitation: heat generated by the electrons that carry information as they move through semiconductors.
As our computers and other electronic devices become faster and more powerful, they are coming closer to an undeniable physical limitation: heat generated by the electrons that carry information as they move through semiconductors.
“Making heat is a fundamental limit that will prevent the further development of electronic devices. So, we are basically hitting a bottleneck because our computers are way faster than they used to be two decades ago,” said Ran Cheng, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering with UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering.
Workarounds – such as the energy- and water-consuming cooling systems at the warehouse-sized data centers operated by Google and other big tech companies -- can go only so far as artificial intelligence, machine learning, video streaming, and other applications demand faster and faster computer processing and memory retrievals.
Yet, Cheng envisions a much cooler future.
Read more at University of California, Riverside
Photo Credit: xresch via Pixabay
