Will This Change Audio?

[Rottmannash]

This sounds promising.

New IBM and Samsung transistors could be key to super-efficient chips (updated)

IBM and Samsung claim they’ve made a breakthrough in semiconductor design.

www.engadget.com

 

[radix]

I believe TFET and the vertical VTFET are for low-power high density uses, mostly for logic to replace CMOS. They operate by quantum tunneling (I think there was an overly long discussion of tunneling in speaker wire a while ago) and are more responsive to smaller gate voltages.

Audio tries to operate in a transistor's linear region. I think TFET has a smaller linear region (vs gate voltage), so I'm guessing that is less suited to analog audio.

It could, eventually, make digital circuits better, but I doubt audio DSPs and such are pushing the bounds of fab size or are power dissipation limited.

My SS physics is pretty old. I'd be interested to hear what others think.

 

[ZolaIII]

This sounds promising.

New IBM and Samsung transistors could be key to super-efficient chips (updated)

IBM and Samsung claim they’ve made a breakthrough in semiconductor design.

www.engadget.com

It's about interposers and packaging (2.5, 3D... stucking - gluing monolithic dies). Nothing really new (Samsung offers vertical extensions for RAM and NAND for couple years already). IBM is using a Samsungs foundry and vertical L2 cache (RAM) for the upcoming server CPU's. On the other hand Samsung is still leading regarding GaA (gate all around FET's) but we will have to wait for that couple more years. Any of this probably will never end in a audio equipment of any kind (regarding manufacturing process same as Fin FAT didn't).
Last promising lithography regarding audio industry relevance and positive effects regarding power consumption whose FD-SOI (including CMOS) from former AMD (and IBM) fab GlobalFaundries (Samsung has it in a 28 nm node and limited capacity but never had any more RF [analog] oriented it or improved it). There whose a lot of fuss about it couple of years back, but up to date we sow very little made on it (couple of GPS modules made by Samsung and firstly commercialised by Sony).

 

[DVDdoug]

Will This Change Audio?

Nope! Class D amplifiers are already very efficient so there's not much more to be gained.

And the efficiency of Class A/B (or Class A) mostly depends on the basic design (the "class") and the particular device(s) doesn't make much difference. The device has to dissipate power (wasted as heat) when operating "linearly" and sending-controlling the analog signal-power to the speaker.

And, since it's already cheap & easy to make electronics with low (often inaudible) noise, and distortion & frequency response that are better than human hearing, there's not much to be gained there either. ...The only possible advantage would be if we can get higher amplifier power at lower cost. But it looks like they are talking about low-power high-density ICs (microprocessors, etc.).

 

[Rottmannash]

Nope! Class D amplifiers are already very efficient so there's not much more to be gained.

And the efficiency of Class A/B (or Class A) mostly depends on the basic design (the "class") and the particular device(s) doesn't make much difference. The device has to dissipate power (wasted as heat) when operating "linearly" and sending-controlling the analog signal-power to the speaker.

And, since it's already cheap & easy to make electronics with low (often inaudible) noise, and distortion & frequency response that are better than human hearing, there's not much to be gained there either. ...The only possible advantage would be if we can get higher amplifier power at lower cost. But it looks like they are talking about low-power high-density ICs (microprocessors, etc.).

So possibly in streamers?

 

[ZolaIII]

FD SOI cuts the consumption in half (without back biasing) compared to the similar planar (28 nm Samsung vs 28 FD-SOI from Samsung). It's cheap and analog mixed. Development (on it) is relatively cheap (as on planar).
Edit: Indirectly interconnecting (techniques) will help with larger block's regarding faster access to gate's on FPGA but FPGA's (which are used for prototyping) are already far ahead of that (problematic) compared to other stuff to expect much.

 

[Killingbeans]

So possibly in streamers?

Nahh, just look at how much processing power you already get in something as puny as a Raspberry Pi.

It's not like digital audio is badly in need of more instructions per second

 

[Lambda]

So possibly in streamers?

Streaming audio is a solved problem in millions of cheap consumer devices like this.
Maybe its gonna be a view % more power efficient but nothing you will notice.

 

[Galliardist]

Increasing power in general computing will lead one day to new paradigms in audio reproduction. Essentially, audio today just for most of us two (or maybe up to a dozen or so) dumb channels - A-D, processing and mixing, D-A. There are some more processor intensive tasks going on in some setups, for example upmixing to surround, some filters, but not a great deal.
The area using most computing power is processing and mixing, so not seen by most of us here as consumers. But that is probably maturing as well without future major boosts in processing power needed.

Some areas of audio are still in their equivalent of the Neolithic. They may well be the future. We may scoff at soundbars today, but it may be that they are the first iteration of a more complex audio technology to come, around speaker arrays, more complex room compensation, directed sound rather than just a stereo soundfield. There may be much more to come than we dream of.

Of course, when the future does arrive, what will we audiophiles do? Argue about how to attach a turntable to it...

 

[ZolaIII]

This is significant! First stocked CMOS.

Sony Develops World’s First*1 Stacked CMOS Image Sensor Technologywith 2-Layer Transistor Pixel｜News Releases｜Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group

Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group develops device business which includes Micro display, LSIs, and Semiconductor Laser, in focusing on Image Sensor.

www.sony-semicon.co.jp