this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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China’s new silicon-free chip beats Intel with 40% more speed and 10% less energy (interestingengineering.com)
submitted 1 day ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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[–] riskable@programming.dev 21 points 1 day ago (4 children)

They're not just bismuth! They're bismuth and selenium with some oxygen mixed in (to connect those elements together, I think).

The reason I point this out is because this means that not only can the chips of the future perform blazingly fast calculations they can also cure your tummy ache and prevent dandruff!

Once this technology becomes mainstream it'll be bismuth as usual. We'll all be getting down to bismuth.

A whole new era of puns is upon us! The product of the selenium.

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

inb4 Trump claims the chinese are putting mind control chips in American shampoo

[–] riskable@programming.dev 2 points 19 hours ago

Nah. It'll be to make them transgendered.

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Would using bismuth in chip production affect the price of medicaments?

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 points 22 hours ago

quick lookup showed pure bismuth at $300/kg. That is not too expensive to make chips, but it would divert demand away from other uses, and we're gonna need a bigger mine. China will find a way, and likely cost reductions will result from volume.

Still, this is a couple of years (wild optimism and resources devoted to it) at least away from Chip products.

[–] flightyhobler@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Don't forget Selenium is also essential to defeat alien organisms!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcEavABwwqg

[–] sping@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago

And it's Wednesday, so it's Bismuth Time

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Am I stupid or is a transistor a very different thing from a chip? Like, a chip has lots of transistors on it, but comparing them is still rather non-sensical...?

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 2 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

it's more accurate to say that the transistors are etched from (or carved out of) the chip than saying that there are transistors on the chip and the size & number are indicators of the technology that has been invented, manufactured, and employed to create them.

every level that we scale to represents the bleeding edge of real world scientific capability for a company and a country and our capitalist society makes these endeavors profitable at the cost of our privacy, security, health and environment.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago

Sure, but so it's still non-sensical to compare a transistor to a whole chip. That's like saying a trumpet is louder than an orchestra.

  1. No, it just isn't.
  2. If we're somehow talking about an orchestra made up of lots of trumpet players being louder than a traditional orchestra, like alright, but then we still gotta figure out what it actually looks like in an orchestra. Does this new transistor actually use less space, for example? What's the price for it? And so on...
[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Again... I didn't even read the article but "[redacted to remove bias] University researchers have developed [better] than leading [whatever]." is definitely interesting yet also pointless. Of course research is important, even fundamental, to the production process... but it's not a fair comparison because production, at scale, and economically reliable requires a LOT more constraints!

So the research, regardless of the source, is welcomed but comparing to production rather than comparing to other research labs pushing limits on the same dimensions is not useful.

PS: for my starting "Again" see my post history.

Edit : AFAICT "outperforms the most advanced commercial chips from [...] Belgium’s Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre." IMEC doesn't do commercial chips, just research.