Revolutionary New Intelligent Transistor Developed


In addition to the usual control gate (red) there is also a program gate (blue). Credit: TU Wien​

In this way, for example, a NAND gate (a logic not-and gate) can be switched to a NOR gate (a logic neither-nor gate). “Until now, the intelligence of electronics has come simply from the interconnection of several transistors, each of which had only a fairly primitive functionality. In the future, this intelligence can be transferred to the adaptability of the new transistor itself,” says Prof. Walter Weber. “Arithmetic operations, which previously required 160 transistors, are possible with 24 transistors due to this increased adaptability. In this way, the speed and energy efficiency of the circuits can also be significantly increased.”

 

Guess the age of germanium is not over. It reads a lot like memistors, those turned into vaporware.

 

Guess the age of germanium is not over. It reads a lot like memistors, those turned into vaporware.

I'm going to go on a very slight rant because this is a topic I'm fond of: Memristors aren't quite vaporware; they're still frequently utilized in various forms of neuromorphic computation, in-memory (or even non-in-memory) analog processing, and research involving non-volatile memory or resistive RAM. Some forms of research in the area of non-Markovian dynamics in physics also use them. Problem is, it's hard at the moment to make a large quantity of them reliably, and they're kind of slow for now (dopant drift is a bit slow). Calling them "vaporware" is kind of a disservice to them; they're just no longer "the buzzword" in "cutting-edge" technologies like they were back when HP announced their titanium oxide memristor prototype. Graphene went through the same deal, and it's making a comeback now due to the advancements in producing and utilizing it.

Regarding the actual topic at hand: these devices look quite cool. I'm curious to see where they go with them. Germanium is dead. Long Live Germanium. I'm curious what applications they can be used for.