Dismissed Discussion on Discrete Circuitry

[Zabuza825]

Esteemed technologist, discrete circuits lack the microchips and other semiconductor components that burn out in an EM attack. Discrete circuits are of discrete components such as transistors and resistors, hence the name. These analog components do not respond as drastically to the sudden current of an EMP as integrated circuitry does, increasing their survivability.

Whoa, wait a minute, are you talking about vacuum tube's?

Cause, to quote the article,

Therefore, if we go back to “old fashioned” electronics, we can both store and maintain EMP resistant devices.

There are reasons why we moved to semiconductor technology, you know. They are:

• Semiconductors could be made smaller than vacuum tubes.
  
• Semiconductors are cheaper to produce than vacuum tubes.
  
• Semiconductors are longer lasing than vacuum tubes.
  
• Because of the smaller size of semiconductors, they could be packed into smaller, more complex circuits, paving the way for the modern CPU.
  

That's not to say semiconductors aren't without flaws. They are susceptible to EMP bursts, as you say, though I do want to point out this branches out to basically all forms of radiation as well. Electrons also take longer to travel through a solid than a vacuum, so computing isn't as fast as it could be with a semiconductor. That said, the vacuum tubes of old had major problems that impeded development, which is why they were abandoned when the semiconductor was invented. Today they're only used in audio stuff (for example, guitar amps) and radio stations (has something to do with the fact that radio antennas sometimes use ludicrous amounts of power, but I'm not 100% sure).

That's not to say scientists aren't trying to develop an alternative to semiconductors - they are. NASA and the US military is particularly interested in this, since NASA has to deal with space radiation and the US military is worried about nuclear weapons.

However, the technology is still in it's infancy. It's not even at a level that can be compared to semiconductors. Most of the examples of such circuitry I can find are nothing more than proofs-of-concepts, and not anything meant to actually be used by people.

For example, we do have the technology to miniature-fy a vacuum tube into a 150 nanometer chip. However, it has major problems. It's ridiculously expensive to produce, and uses 10 times the amount of power (this proof-of-concept requires 10 volts of power, a comparable semiconductor would require only 1 volt) which renders it incompatible with modern circuits. Not to mention that Intel has been making CPU's with a minimum feature size of 14 nm, much smaller than the 150 nm that this vacuum tube is.

Even if you aren't talking specifically about vacuum tubes, the question just then becomes what exactly you're talking about. Traditional transistors and resistors aren't really a viable replacement for a semiconductor after all. There are people working on it, such as a team at the Uslan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). That said, the details on UNIST's efforts are remarkably vague, so I'd guess it's still very early in development.

Does this tech have the potential to change a lot? Hell yeah. I think it'd be amazing to see it in action.

But, I don't think we're anywhere near developing this past a proof-of-concept in real life.