Stone Knives and Bear Skins

[Metryq]

Introducing the Vacuum Transistor: A Device Made of Nothing

Our very first effort to fashion a prototype produced a device that could operate at 460 gigahertz—roughly 10 times as fast as the best silicon transistor can manage.

In September 1976, in the midst of the Cold War, Victor Ivanovich Belenko, a disgruntled Soviet pilot, veered off course from a training flight over Siberia in his MiG-25 Foxbat, flew low and fast across the Sea of Japan, and landed the plane at a civilian airport in Hokkaido with just 30 seconds of fuel remaining. His dramatic defection was a boon for U.S. military analysts, who for the first time had an opportunity to examine up close this high-speed Soviet fighter, which they had thought to be one of the world’s most capable aircraft. What they discovered astonished them.

For one thing, the airframe was more crudely built than those of contemporary U.S. fighters, being made mostly of steel rather than titanium. What’s more, they found the plane’s avionics bays to be filled with equipment based on vacuum tubes rather than transistors. The obvious conclusion, previous fears aside, was that even the Soviet Union’s most cutting-edge technology lagged laughably behind the West’s.

...

Admittedly, a great deal of work remains to be done before we can begin to envision commercial products emerging. But when they eventually do, this new generation of vacuum electronics will surely boast some surprising capabilities. Expect that. Otherwise you might end up feeling a bit like those military analysts who examined that Soviet MiG-25 in Japan back in 1976: Later they realized that its vacuum-based avionics could withstand the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear blast better than anything the West had in its planes. Only then did they begin to appreciate the value of a little nothingness.

 

[varek]

The vacuum-transistor in this article sounds incredible, if it can overcome some of its basic problems.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconduc...he-vacuum-transistor-a-device-made-of-nothing

I wonder if you could contain a vacuum inside something other than glass--something less fragile. And, weight is still a problem, isn't it?

Water is also said to be a potentially fast candidate for computer-brains, but you would still have the problems of sturdy containers and weight, I think.

Hexagonal forms of water molecule may potentially be able to retain data in computers. The hydrogen bonding seems to be the key.

http://www.aquatechnology.net/electromagneticeffects.html

The key may be using a ruthenium ion. Ruthenium absorbs solar energy and is used in some superconductors.

http://witcombe.sbc.edu/water/chemistryelectrolysis.html

http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/32014/Nano-layer_of_ruthenium_stabilizes_magnetic_sensors.html

 

[Metryq]

I wonder if you could contain a vacuum inside something other than glass--something less fragile. And, weight is still a problem, isn't it?

Read. The proposed device does not have to actually use a vacuum due to the very short "mean path." I haven't looked at the sources you linked, so I don't know if water or some other medium might be better than silicon semiconductors. However, the big argument for the "vacuum" design is that diffusion is dramatically reduced.

The suggested terahertz sensing applications alone would be world changing.