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A superconductor, once cooled below a critical temperature, loses all of its electrical resistance and therefore becomes 100% efficient. This means that when a current flows through a superconductor, none of the energy is lost to heat or light.

Theoretically, could we build a processor out of superconductive materials, that could effectively run at, oh I don't know, say, 300ghz? or 5,000ghz?

Since a superconductive circuit is 100% efficient, this means that once supplied with electricity, the source of power could be completely removed from the circuit and the current would continue to flow forever. So if we made all the components inside a computer out of superconductive materials, could we get away with only supplying power to the peripherals and save a-whole-lot on energy, while dramatically increasing computing speed?

Might this be one of the next big breakthroughs in computing?

What do you think?

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Super User is a site for questions about actual computer hardware and software; it is not a site for discussing things that might be the next big breakthrough. this question sounds like perfect Slashdot material. – quack quixote May 30 '10 at 0:58
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Indeed it's a nice idea, but I wouldn't sprint down to the patent office yet. Only the conductive "wires" in the IC could readily be constructed from superconducting materials; the semi-conductors - which make up the important aspects of a CPU - are quite different. I've never heard of a super-semi-conductor. A potential gain from superconductivity for consumers (other than MRI machines and, more intellectually, the LHC) could be from superconducting transmission cables (approximately 8% of energy is lost during electricity transmission). Cooling is still a huge problem though. – sblair May 30 '10 at 1:00
@sblair: yup, which is why the holy grail here is room-temperature superconducting materials. – quack quixote May 30 '10 at 1:20
And just for context, the present highest temperature superconductor operates at just a bit over 100K (-173C/-280F), but perhaps less depending on the electric current and any magnetic field. – sblair May 30 '10 at 1:39
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closed as not a real question by quack quixote May 30 '10 at 0:57

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