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What do you consider to be the biggest technological advancement for electrical components?
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When I met th'POPE back in '58, I scrubbed him with a MILD SOAP or
DETERGENT for 15 minutes. He seemed to enjoy it ...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday November 16 2018, @05:07PM (6 children)
I would rather have been able to vote for Semiconductors over Transistors. There are many types of semiconductor devices other than transistors. Semiconductors required an understanding of quantum mechanical phenomena. (Yet some people say we don't need pure basic research for its own sake.)
For example, there is a modern one (IGBT [wikipedia.org]) with 4 alternating P/N layers that switches high power loads, efficiently1, and fast enough to do good pulse width modulation. Notice how Power Inverters (12 DV to 110 VAC) once were massive, expensive, had limited power, and hugely gigantic and heavy transformers. Now a 100 W inverter is the size of a car cigarette lighter insert (eg, 12 DC socket) with a 110 VAC outlet on the other end. Not only 60 Hz sine waves, but a lot of waveforms these days are synthesized. Thanks to semiconductors.
Then LEDs. These are another important semiconductor. (look at your OLED smartphone)
It turns out all diodes can actually be light emitting -- at least once. Then I turn my attention to light emitting resistors. At that point the principle investigator's wife insisted that further experiments on light emitting resistors must be moved to the garage.
ICs are another important application of semiconductors. Such as Intel's revolutionary 8008 microprocessor [wikipedia.org] in 1972. It had 14 external address lines. So you could address up to 16 K -- and that ought to be enough for anybody!
1efficiently: using as few fish as possible
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 17 2018, @08:36PM (1 child)
Understanding not required. We may not yet understand the true "first principles" by which anything works. All that is required is to know how to reproduce desired behavior, bonus points if you can develop multi-dimensional behavioral control with your knowledge of how to make things happen.
Carpenters using span tables don't need to know how to calculate stresses in a beam, and even the makers of the span tables don't really need to know that, nor do they use engineering/physics formulae exclusively in the development of span tables - experimental testing is a huge part of the final answer of: how does this material behave when loaded. Very similar approaches are used where the doping agents meet the semiconductors. We _think_ we have an understanding of the quantum processes underpinning the behaviors, but those are just a rough guide to what really happens in a 7nm process.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 28 2018, @09:16PM
Understanding very definitely required. Without a sufficient understanding of quantum mechanics, even the idea of the transistor would have been impossible. It's not something you find by accident.
Understanding does not necessarily mean understanding the first principles. If you only consider someone to understand computers if you understand it from first principles, then you probably can count the number of people who understand computers on one hand. There are probably not many people who have in-depth knowledge of everything in semiconductor physics, integrated circuits, chip design, processor design, computer architecture, motherboard layout, the various bus systems, assembly programming, compiler technology, all programming languages used in the computer, operating system design, GPU programming, …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Dr Spin on Sunday November 18 2018, @08:06PM (3 children)
It turns out all diodes can actually be light emitting -- at least once.
I think you are confusing them with smoke emitting diodes.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 19 2018, @03:25PM
If it emits smoke before it emits light, then you have miscalculated your power supply design.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @06:16PM (1 child)
Oh, yes: my favourite was the the 1N000 - colour coded with three black bands on a black background!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday November 22 2018, @11:13AM
Gawd, that was old germanium point-contact stuff, nowadays we're on silicon 2N000's.