Gallium Arsenide CPU's ie Cray 3 and solar panels

Jamie M · 2015-10-06T00:30:09+00:00

Hi, I was reading about the Cray 3 supercomputer from about 20 years ago, 500MHz clock with lots of small gallium arsenide die bonded IC's connected together to form the processors.. I thought that GaAs was a poor material to use due to being difficult to do CMOS due to the P channel taking up 10x too much die area or something like that. Did the Cray 3 have this P channel transistor penalty? What are the future prospects for GaAs to replace silicon for CPU's? Also any comments on why GaAs wasn't used a long time ago for both solar panels and also CPU's? ie if gallium arsenide had been used solar concentrator panels would have been a great energy source a long time ago, and with mass production gallium arsenide wafers would have been more economical for both solar and semiconductors. Also there are sources of gallium, ie fly ash waste from coal plants that can be harvested with the correct technology, making it a less rare element. Since silicon has advanced so far, I have heard that GaAs is not necessary as many of its advantages no longer apply, and instead another technology will replace silicon, ie carbon nanotube transistors etc. thoughts? cheers, Jamie

Oct 06, 2015 20 Replies

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Jim Thompson 10 years ago

In my OmniComp/GenRad days "pin driver" meant a chip that could force a current and measure a voltage or vice versa, mostly for PCB (bed of nails) testers.

I designed that kind of chip for OmniComp (~1977)... 192 used per briefcase sized tester. ...Jim Thompson

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Gallium Arsenide CPU's ie Cray 3 and solar panels

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