NEC Develops World's Smallest Transistor

TECH SPACE

By 2020 rather than combining racks of cheap Linux boxes to make one big supercomputer - the individual boxes will be as powerful as today's most powerful supercomputers

Tokyo (AFP) - Dec 09, 2003
Japan's computer giant NEC Corp. has developed the world's smallest transistor in a breakthrough which could lead to the production of a supercomputer the size of a desktop PC, a report said.

The newly developed transistor is only 1/18th the size of the most common transistor now in mass production, the Asahi Shimbun said, quoting company sources.

With the new technology, a typical semiconductor chip measuring one square centimeter (0.16 square inches) would be able to hold 40 billion transistors, about 150 times the current number.

The technology would cut the size of huge supercomputers, which are capable of making 600 billion calculations a second, to a similar bulk as ordinary desktop computers, the newspaper said.

NEC researchers are to announce the development at the International Electron Devices Meeting to be held in Washington from Monday.

Production technology still needs to be developed before the transistor can be mass-produced. NEC expects to market the transistor in about 2020, the daily said.

TECH SPACE

Airborne Laser Optical Link Demonstrator

Bonn - Dec 09, 2003
EADS Astrium has been awarded a contract by the French MoD Procurement Agency � Telecommunication and Observation Programs Dept for the demonstration of an optical link between an airborne carrier representative of the future medium- and high-altitude UAVs (MALE and HALE) and the Artemis geo-stationary satellite from ESA by 2006. EADS Astrium is prime on this programme valued at around 50 M euro on which Alcatel Space and ONERA participate as sub-contractors.

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