Diamonds may ring in computer advancementsBy Mike Barton and agenciesJanuary 5, 2005Page Tools * Email to a friend * Printer format * *Diamonds may not be just a girl's best friend anymore - computers of the future could sport the rocks to break an impending computing barrier.Today's silicon chips are reaching a limit to how fast they can operate because of the heat they generate, which may halt progress in making faster models after a decade or so, experts say."There are all kinds of people saying technology will hit a brick wall," said a former CSIRO computer scientist, Shaun Cunningham.Researchers in California are investigating using diamonds, which are already widely employed in manufacturing because of their toughness and extreme heat resistance, to break through the barrier."I would not be surprised at all ... five or 10 years down the line, that diamond would be a common material in a computer," said Damon Jackson, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, near San Francisco.The price of the diamond computer chips would be a big obstacle to their use in personal computers that now cost less than $1000, but the scientists believe an entirely man-made diamond chip with the circuitry could also be produced.AdvertisementAdvertisementBut Mr Cunningham, who left the CSIRO last year after 12 years to start the company Epitactix, said his firm was developing computer chips using silicon-based compounds for more expensive applications such as next generation ultra-fast wireless internet services.He said the compounds, while more expensive than silicon, could make their way to personal computers before diamonds.Today's computer chips are slabs of silicon topped with millions of tiny transistors that provide the computing power as electricity passes through them.Moore's law, which predicts that computing power will double roughly every two years, has been achieved with current technology by fitting more transistors on shrinking chips, but that is unsustainable, experts say.Australia is at the forefront of quantum computing, which will crunch numbers like today's silicon chips using light. It could boost computing power by trillions, but there were "humungous" obstacles and decades before it would make its way to computers - if it ever happened, a CSIRO spokesman said.