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Small is beautiful
Today, computers are affordable, ranging from $800 to $8,000. They have also become more personalized, with a variety of software to choose from.
Computer technology, and more broadly, information technology are bringing about a fundamental transformation in our society. A review of history and the present state of information technology shows two major undercurrents. One of them is the miniaturization of computer components, which has led to a tremendous increase in the complexity of a single chip of silicon.
The computer has been drastically miniaturized. The first computer, UNIVAC, was the size of a room and was not available to the average consumer. C.J. Huston, UNIVAC’s programmer was set on selling it at around $25,000, which was not affordable for the average consumer. It could only do basic math and accounting.
For the computer to perform an application that you wanted, one had to insert a program card. Today, however, computers are affordable to the consumer, ranging from $800 to $8,000. They have also become more personalized with a variety of software to choose from. These include gaming, financial, home decorating and self-help programs. The computer now has a modem for the internet, which allows you to log on and find information about various items, buy things and communicate with other people. The programming is already done for you. The size can fit a regular desktop or can even be portable.
The definition of the word “miniaturization” was taken from the world-famous Ball State TCOM website. It is exactly what it sounds like: “A process of making something smaller.” Miniaturization involves certain media, like cellular telephones, computers, digital cameras and radios, among many others. At Philips Magnavox they explain miniaturization as: “The continual shrinkage of dimensions in process technology.”
With modern life speeding up and the population rising rapidly, there isn’t any room left for bulky technology and awkwardly large media. The trend is towards miniaturization and it is only beginning. Leaders in miniaturization are corporations like Canon and Nokia, among many other powerful, global companies.
Miniaturization means that far less copper strip products are required to carry the signal between components. However, growth in the sale of electronic equipment has more than offset the losses resulting from miniaturization. Copper and copper alloy consumption in electronic interconnect products has been increasing. It is reasonable to assume that these two competing effects will be in place through the next decade.
This chip technology makes computers faster and brings high-end computing power to portable devices. Copper’s superior conductivity within the IC will permit the device to operate at a modest 1.8 volts, thus making chips ideal for battery-operated portable electronic products due to their inherent low consumption of power. Over time, copper is expected to be the predominant metal used in high-performance integrated circuits. Low voltages would inherently produce cooler chips resulting in a decreased need for high-temperature resistant lead frame alloys.
As silicon features in the design, sizes continue to shrink, requiring lower supply voltages, tolerances in conventional supply regulation techniques have made ASIC design increasingly difficult. Standard tolerances result in a larger variation in performance, making it extremely difficult to achieve speed and power goals within a competitive design cycle. Innotech System Inc. (ISI) has recognized the need for a more effective approach to managing performance and power. By focusing on supply regulation, ISI has developed a solution called ACCEL that provides tighter control over design parameters, resulting in optimized performance.
Future trends and developments especially in the information technology industry can have a profound effect. The transistor and the microprocessor are the most important inventions of the twentieth century. Great inventions revise civilization by erecting new institutions, establishing new industries, and revolutionizing work and play. Think of the automobile and how it transformed modern life, from the creation of suburbs to the radical change in the way we view distance and time. And like the automobile, a late nineteenth century invention that reached its zenith in the twentieth century, the microprocessor is only now, at the end of twentieth century, coming into its own. Its true impact will only be felt in the century to come.
The industrial revolution, which irrevocably changed the world, was set off by only a 50-time improvement in productivity — a leap so great that it completely changed society.
The latest generation of microprocessors already has 100 times the computing power of personal computers of just 10 years ago. That is why things are changing so fast around us. And that is why the microprocessor is so important. It is the invention that changed and will continue to change the world.
The continuing electronics revolution depends on transistor miniaturization. The smaller the transistors, the faster they perform and the higher the integration per chip. Therefore, the more functions the circuitry can perform.
The central premise is to proceed to atomic scale and create all devices with an atomic technology. Otherwise small devices may have slightly different structures — resulting in identically designed devices with slightly different switch-on voltages. This is fatal when millions or billions of transistors are integrated in a computer chip, because these slight variations can cascade from one device to the next and will eventually produce errors. This was not a problem when the transistor size was five microns. Typically, there are 10 thousand "dopant" atoms in the channel (so called, because a chemical process called "doping" introduces chemical impurities, such as phosphorus or boron, to change the electrical properties in a transistor). These many dopant atoms appear as a kind of uniform dopant "jelly" in the channel — small variations will average out over the large volume.
However, when the transistor size is reduced to less than 0.1 micron, the number of dopant atoms is small, less than 100, so each dopant position matters. This means that the switch-on voltage will vary from device to device as long as dopant positions cannot be controlled within atomic precision.
A fundamental solution is to create all device structures with atomic precision. Since the device itself is in the atomic scale and all constituent atoms are placed at designated positions, the device variation problem disappears.
Miniaturization breakthroughs combined with the scaling benefits of the quantum transistor, the utility of voice recognition and novel human/machine interface technologies will make the concept of a computer the size of a lapel pin, a reality in the twenty-first century. While there are many advantages of miniaturization, for example, downsizing of power sources and the saving of space, there are also disadvantages. For one thing, the size of microphones become smaller, infringing on privacy.
Jeremy Wallace, a researcher, said in 2003 that this trend would continue being popular. It will eventually lead to the replacing of most technologies now, such as fuel cells and smaller electric cells. Eventually, it will stop at electronic devices, because it will then be hard to view screens. Computer chips will be made to the one billionth of a nanometer allowing more powerful computers. Other scientists and researchers believe that at some point, technology will not be able to continue with miniaturization because it will become too complicated to operate a simple tool. For example, text messaging from your cellphone will become very difficult if the buttons are small.
The miniaturization of devices has called for miniaturization of thermal solutions. Heating pipes, embedded copper spreaders and low-profile fan heat sinks are enabling more and more powerful devices to be used in smaller and smaller packages, ensuring long life in automated industrial systems. Thermal modeling allows optimization of the size of overall thermal solution. As computing becomes more pervasive, these innovative cooling solutions may begin to find their way into more embedded products.
Miniaturization connects with other mega trends. We can finally take a condensed computer or a laptop on a plane and type a paper to meet our deadline. So, three cheers for mobility.
The writer fahad829 @yahoo.com is a lecturer at the Dawood College of Engineering and Technology, Karachi
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