this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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[–] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 13 points 1 year ago

So would this mean that cpus would not generate heat?

Not quite. Charges undergoing acceleration and state transitions still generate EM radiation, and still lose energy. In a semiconductor, charges start moving, stop moving, and change direction all the time. So that form of energy loss & heat generation will continue.

In addition, the semiconductor itself is still a semiconductor, not a superconductor. To take advantage of the ability of a semiconductor to hold charges in specific states, there will be some heat losses.

But, a practical superconductor could be used to form all the interconnects in a PC board or the surface of a silicon chip device, providing an efficiency improvement.