Teaching Old Transistors New Tricks
June 23, 2009
An interesting little tidbit crossed my computer screen recently: researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had created the fastest LED ever. With electronics fresh on the brain, I asked the record-breakers what this means for the rest of us slowpokes.
Engineering professor Nick Holonyak Jr., who actually invented the LED in 1962, was one of the researchers for the study. "Computer and data processing, because of speed and massive issues of data processing, are beginning to choke," he told me via email. "All of this is taking too much energy."
Holonyak, along with engineering professor Milton Feng and researchers from Malaysia, created what they call a "tilted-charge light-emitting diode." I call it an LED-transistor mash-up. Previously, LEDs maxed out at a signal speed of 1.7 gigahertz. The University of Illinois team, by incorporating transistor tech into the LED, pushed that speed to a record-breaking 4.3 gigahertz. Then, with some tweaks, they achieved 7 gigahertz. Simply, this could translate into cheaper, faster, and more energy-efficient computing.
Today's supercomputers--which are basically a bunch of computing power amassed in the same place--require multimillion-dollar climate-controlled buildings. In the future, Feng and his fellow researchers envision supercomputers fitting in a small box or notebook. How's that for efficient?
Photo: Milton Feng (left) and Nick Holonyak (right) in a 2006 photo. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer.
Comments
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sir...can u give me more infornation about this promising led
i want to present a seminar about this in my college..
Posted by: mahesh | July 13, 2009 at 05:57 AM
Hi Mahesh,
I'm sure you can learn more by reading their publications and contacting the professors. Their profiles have more info: http://www.ece.illinois.edu/people/profile.asp?mfeng and http://mntl.illinois.edu/ssdl/ Good luck to you!
Posted by: Alyssa Danigelis | July 14, 2009 at 12:12 AM
Thanks a lot blogger for such a nice post about Teaching Old Transistors New Tricks . I appreciate your post .
:-)
Keep blogging
Posted by: Jonathan Paul | October 14, 2009 at 07:29 AM