Re: The market of ASICs (One GigaKey / Second?)

The limiter is not the semiconductor, but other
factors. The random noise in the carriers goes down,
theoretically until absolute zero. Devices that work
on electric fields continue to work, only better.

At low temperatures the moisture from the air comes
out and bathes the chip in a poodle of water, thus it
needs to be constantly purged. Eventually what fails
is the package, or the bond wires, or both.

I made a theoretical calculation for 10degrees K, but
in practice the cooling will be much less. In an FPGA
the routing necessarily needs to be substantial and it
will tend to dominate the delay. Thus the speed-up
will be modest. Perhaps less than 10%.

--- Elektron <elektron_rc5-FFYn/[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> On 11 Aug, 2004, at 13:13, david fleischer wrote:
> 
> > --- jbass-/[email protected] wrote:
> >
> >> Anybody know what happens to an FPGA's
> performance
> >> if you cool it down
> >> to 10K?
> >>
> >> John
> >
> > It gets faster... by how much? the thresholds of
> the
> > transistors go down by about 1 mV for each 3deg,
> if i
> > remember correctly. This makes them switch faster,
> > until all of the delay is caused not by the
> switching
> > but by the routing (in an FPGA this dominates).
> 
> I think semiconductors don't work properly at really
> low temperatures, 
> but that could just be me.
> 
> - Purr
> 

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