"This means processing speeds in devices based on them could reach femtoseconds, a million times as fast as the speeds achievable with current gigahertz electronics"
That seems like quite the discovery.
That seems like quite the discovery.
Unfortunately the rarest of rare materials, but the above quote does point out that it shows us what’s possible even if it isn’t viable yet.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenium
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312513/rhenium-producti...
The 60g figure is for the packaging, not the chip. The actual chips are tiny and weight much less than that, probably under 1g for most processors.
This new semiconductor isn't pure rhenium, it's a compound, and hence less than 1g would be needed, or about $10 per chip, maximum.
Realistically, this new semiconductor would be deposited as an extremely thin layer on top of something cheaper like silicon or quartz. The material cost per chip would be measured in cents.
Depending on the kind of deposition method used, for depositing a certain amount on the wafer, a much greater quantity is used, which ends deposited on the equipment, or as chemical precursors mixed and reacted or unreacted.
Due to the rhenium cost and scarcity, all the rhenium compounds that are not deposited on the wafer must be recycled. That can raise the cost a lot.
Finding a compatible substrate for deposition, with an appropriate crystal structure, can be very difficult.
I had been thinking that viability of yield could be an issue too as it would have the same wafer fabrication yield, wafer sort yield, and packaging yield that silicon does. And as a new and profoundly expensive material there is going to be an appreciable learning curve.
Is that what you’re referring to? Or is there more to it even than that?
The price of rhenium would skyrocket to million dollars per kg, and as long as production would stay the same (assuming it's limited by raw resource availability rather than just extraction methods) it would keep getting higher.
The current relatively low price of rhenium (relative to its rarity) is simply due to low demand.
Sure, assuming (1) we can actually produce a rhenium CPU, and (2) we are unable to increase the production of rhenium then, yes, the price of rhenium will increase.
But it will increase precisely because we have a working rhenium CPU in production in the first place, which is what the article disputes is possible (due to its current rarity).
Furthermore, the price would skyrocket only if people are actually willing to pay a high price for these rhenium CPUs, which again means they’re worth the money.
For stuff previously needed in low quantities it's usually the reverse - price goes down as more is needed. Initially prices are high because manufacturing equipment has to be maintained even if idle, wages have to be paid, and because of logisticical overhead for the small quanitites. A second price drop occurs as we get into mass-manufacturing and better processes are found.
Rhenium is a byproduct of mining and refinement, but I suspect it is often not captured because the small quanitites needed don't make it economically interesting - you would invest in infrastructure to extract it and immediately crash the price. That would change if there was a stable demand of higher quantities.
No, your source clearly says that was its peak price in 2008/2009, after which it fell to ~$3000 in 2018, and in 2020 it was $1000/kg [1].
[1] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-rhenium.pd...
It is unlikely that the rhenium price will ever return to that value.
The problem is that there are no chances of greatly increasing the production, so any new application will increase the price.
Most probably you'd see this tech in highly specialized interfacing circuits, like current GaAs chips.
I can also imagine Juniper using them in an ASIC and charging a ton.
If desirable CPUs are made of Rhenium with an effective production line and that the raw supply is so tight, the price certainly won't stay at $10000/Kg, and probably will align with equivalent computation power/watt of traditional designs. Any investor will see that it will only make miner rich without that much return miles aways, and walk away.
processing speeds in devices based on them could reach femtoseconds
> “[…] they are not necessarily compatible with current hardware used in the semiconductor industry,” […] the applications for these semiconductors “would likely be different than those for traditional semiconductors.”