New 2D chip breakthrough may crush silicon chips forever

China has begun mass production of next-generation processors based on molybdenum disulfide instead of traditional silicon semiconductors[1]. According to Professor Li Hongge’s team at Beihang University, these chips merge binary and stochastic logic to achieve better fault tolerance and power efficiency for applications like touch displays and flight systems[2].

The breakthrough came through developing a Hybrid Stochastic Number (HSN) system that combines traditional binary with probability-based numbers[2:1]. This innovation helps overcome two major challenges in chip technology - the power wall from binary systems’ high energy consumption, and the architecture wall that makes new non-silicon chips difficult to integrate with conventional systems[2:2].

  1. AzerNews - China mass-produces silicon-free chips ↩︎

  2. SCMP - China starts mass production of world’s first non-binary AI chip ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  • ragas@lemmy.ml
    12·
    5 hours ago

    Still no source but ok.

    Oh right, the famous laws of physics that apparently decree silicon must forever be the cheapest material.

    I never said that.

    Silicon is cheap because we made it cheap.

    True. However that doesn’t mean that, at the current point of technology available to us, scaling a different material in the same way woul get us chepaper or better computing.

    To claim nothing else could ever compete requires ignoring how technological progress actually works.

    I never claimed that.

    If we had poured the same obsessive investment into germanium or gallium arsenide, we’d be having this same smug conversation about them instead.

    However this is untrue. There are regular atempts to use Gallium in silicon processing and gallium transistors are in fact already mass produced for power handling applications. So not even the scaling argument holds true about Gallium. The issue is just that gallium transistors are still inherently more costly to produce.

    https://softhandtech.com/is-gan-better-than-silicon/

    We would need a technological breakthrough to make Gallium viable against silicon. But with current technology it is just worse than silicon from a price/performance standpoint.

    Similarly, graphene isn’t too expensive because physics. It’s too expensive because we’re still learning how to make it in bulk with high quality. Give it a fraction of the focus and funding that silicon has enjoyed and watch the cost curve do the same dramatic dive.

    True except as I was saying and you are saying here too, we would need some kind of technological breakthrough to make graphene viable.

    This is on a Level of development where they hope to have first viable products for some edge cases in the next 10 to 15 years.

    https://semiengineering.com/the-race-to-replace-silicon/ https://blacksemi.com/2025/02/06/black-semiconductor-starts-fabone/

    So yes in this case we could say invest all into graphene and nothing else. Which will mean that all other semiconductor innovation stops so that maybe in 15 years we have cool brand new graphene computing, or maybe not.

    The only real law at play here is the law of economies of scale.

    As explained above, in reality there is just no other option available that makes any sense. If you have any other option that will work please tell me and only me so that I can start founding my startup.

    Because the big player sure as hell know that silicon shrinking is not working any more and researching for alternatives.

    https://inf.news/en/science/0e165f2238a902cf3a3d5c1fbd0d316a.html

    Silicon doesn’t have a magical property that makes it uniquely cheap.

    Except that is actually the case. Silicon is a widely available material that is easy to work with. And through that beats many other materials immediately.

    That doesn’t mean that it will stay that way forever. But it is disingenuous to say that just switching to something else will be better.

    your physical laws will look a lot more like a temporary price tag.

    Oh I don’t disagree with you here. The question is just how big will the price tag be. Because with what we currently can foresee all other price tags are still pretty enormous.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
      11·
      2 hours ago

      I love how you just keep repeating the same thing over and over. Your whole argument is that we need some amazing breakthrough to make other materials viable, but the reality is that it’s just a matter of investment over time. That’s it. China is investing into development of new substrates at state level, and that’s effectively unlimited funding. The capitalist economic arguments don’t apply here. If you think they won’t be able to figure this out then prepare to be very surprised in the near future.

      • ragas@lemmy.ml
        11·
        2 hours ago

        Look unless you come up with any substantiating, through sources, of your constantly repeated same argument of scale being the only thing that matters, this discussion is over.