Super Hi-tech: Superchips and Superconductivity

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Levitating a magnet above a ceramic superconductor cooled to 77°K in liquid nitrogen is a neat trick. It’s also a high-tech advance that—coupled with VHSIC technology (inset: a VHSIC-enhanced advanced signal processor on board a Navy P-3C in 1986)—will enhance sensor, signal processing, radar, and commu­nication systems.

Proceedings / Octob*^r

he U. S. armed forces are taking ad- rev i ^{6 a} worldwide technological d₀I ^ut'^on> Pegging the emerging tech- ties of superchips and superconduc-

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^mt0 more powerful, reliable military equipment and improved tac-

_no,_o^and strategies. The shift to high tech- ^ has come about largely as a quali- $₀ ^{e res}Ponse to quantitatively superior _an!^{lat an}d Warsaw Pact forces in Europe Wo | °^v'^et'^equipped forces in the Third ■ Advocates of the “electrotech-

ugies” argue that high-tech advances •he l^°^{Se lde} “numbers gap” between filed States and the Soviet Union,

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oring down the cost and size of ^skil] °^{n s}y^{stems an}d reduce the need for ^ed electronic technicians. ^cUre' '^{CS l}hc Pentagon’s recent pro- _his,^ment policies claim that emerging °p_er ^tech weapons are more difficult to °ns ^{316 and} maintain than current weap- a ’ ^and that employing them will create .i.. ^d f°r more technicians and skilled

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lom f " ^llIls’ ¹¹ true, will create a proo- c_aus °^{r l}he next military generation, be- skri ⁶, .’he pool of potential recruits is v°,         *8. Since the advent of the all-

diilit- ^Cti^{r arme}d forces, most of the O ^s ranks have been filled by high tech⁰¹ ^^raduates. But with new, high- lo_at^^stems, the armed forces may need tioi "tgly

^;-,_ns^ract Personnel with advanced educa- ’ ^wh° will be able to handle increas- ^^Sophisticated weapons. st_{em f} ^ad military electronic innovations ttiiii,. ^f°^{m emer}ging technologies. Many irnp₀ ^ P*^afmers believe that it is equally day’_s ^ant to minimize the costs of to- ^estahr ^C^^U'P^ment through better use of

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systems. For instance, engi-

fore ^n<a developers are now squeezing ne_nts f^>Crf°rmance from standard compo- Hn(J_er.^and integrated circuitry, rather than sig_n .,^a^^lng new, costly programs to de­nies ^{e CUs}tom devices needed to imple- tho_Se ^tae latest technologies, such as Pe_rcn ^ass°ciated with superchip and su-

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the . P^erchips: Computers are used in ifa_na ^med forces for everything from he h_af^{a mess t()} alerting a pilot when is ^reache aDout t

can_not ¹⁰ l^{3385 out}' Today’s military tod_ay, ^SUrvive without computers, and crn _w. ^c°mputers cannot support mod- _Sup^rare without the “superchip.” are    ^are electronic devices that

One nv ^ ’^mproving computing power. ^c0^rp_Or ^ai°^{r su}perchip supplier, TRW In- tie^ ofr^’ ^^{as wor}ked with the Depart­ary ^ defense to develop a revolution- 'P based on very high-speed

’reached terminal “g” velocity and

integrated circuit (VHSIC) technology. TRW is scheduled to complete its new superchip next summer. The VHSIC pro­gram, now in Phase Two, also involves IBM and Honeywell. The most uncanny characteristic of these Phase-Two chips is their density. TRW’s “CPUAX (central processing unit, arithmatic extended) Superchip,” for example, measures 1.5 inches by 1.6 inches and will contain four-million-plus devices. By contrast, TRW’s Phase-One chips measure about ^lA inch on a side and contain 13,000 to 80,000 devices.

The rate at which electricity passes through a chip or integrated circuit is measured in hertz (Hz). Today’s personal computers operate at a maximum of 12 megahertz (MHz). Phase One chips oper­ate at 25 MHz; the Phase Two chip will operate four times faster, 100 MHz— changing its state 100 million times a sec­ond, with multiple operations proceeding during each change. The CPUAX Super­chip will be able to perform operations nearly at the speed of a Cray 1 supercom­puter.

IBM produced the first fully functional and tested .5-micron (one-millionth of a meter) VHSIC Phase-Two chip in May 1988. The chip, which also operates at 100 MHz, measures 5.5 mm. square. IBM is now developing a family of .5- micron chips for defense-related applica­tions, such as signal processing and gen­eral purpose computing.¹

Last July, IBM delivered the all- VHSIC, high-performance common sig­nal processor (CSP) to the U. S. Air Force. The CSP uses VHSIC Phase-One (one-micron chip) technology and oper­ates in the range of 1.8 billion floating point operations per second. The system “provides supercomputer-like perfor­mance without the large cooling systems required by today’s supercomputers.”² The CPS is configurable for radar; elec­tronic warfare; communications; naviga­tion and identification; electro-optical detection/target recognition; digital map­ping; sonar; integrated avionics applica­tions; and mobile ground, surface, and submarine applications.³

The end product of the TRW VHSIC Phase-Two program, the CPUAX super­chip, is intended to function as the central brains of an advanced digital signal pro­cessing system. The CPUAX superchip will also incorporate three unique capa­bilities. They are:

► Self-contained spare components

► Built-in testing

► Software reconfiguration

Software reconfiguration programs will allow the equipment to be changed as the missions change over time and will

greatly advance avionics, spacecraft, and weapon control equipment, as well as radar analysis. These features will allow electronic warfare and other systems to identify their faults, bypass their failed parts, and form new interconnections in­corporating spare devices—without user intervention.

A radar system using signal processing at the VHSIC Phase-Two level, for ex­ample, will realize a substantial increase in its abilities to process returns in real time and to detect and identify potential targets. VHSIC technology will allow powerful signal processors to be made small enough to be incorporated into a variety of electronic warfare systems for use on numerous platforms.

Such applications have already been tested. In August 1986, IBM engineers inserted an enhanced VHSIC brassboard into an AN/UYS-1 advanced signal proc­essor (ASP) on board a Navy P-3C Orion. The installation took just 30 min­utes and required only an Allen wrench.⁴ A text flight across the Atlantic showed that the VHSIC insertion doubled the ASP’s sonobouy processing capabilities.⁵

The implications of these concepts, in terms of electronic training and the basic demand for technicians in the armed ser­vices, are profound. Today, one in five enlisted members of the military holds an electronics-related job, compared with one in 20 at the end of World War II. The Navy now spends about $150,000 to train each electronic warfare technician in class “A” and “C” schools. The devel­opment and progress of the superchip underscores claims that it will both re­duce the costs of many systems and re­duce the need for skilled technicians. But this raises the question: What incentive will there be for a highly qualified indi­vidual to enlist for any type of electronics training if the need to train technicians becomes obsolete?

Superconductivity: Superconductivity is considered by most experts to be the third age of electronics, following the advances brought about by transistors and integrated circuits. Superconductors are certain materials that, when cooled, can conduct electricity without resistance and, therefore, without losing energy.

Superconductivity is not new. The Dutch scientist Heike Onnes discovered the phenomenon in 1911. During his re­search on the effects of extremely cold temperatures on metallic substances, Onnes discovered that mercury lost all resistance to the flow of electricity when cooled to around 4° Kelvin (K). (0° K equals —459.4° Fahrenheit and —273° Celsius.) Until this discovery, there was

155

will have tremendous benefits on vu submarines, ships, and tanks, ^wtie space is always at a premium.        ,

The military is conducting ^resear into several other superconductivity ^aP^ plications. Superconductive electron! will enhance sensors, making them m sensitive over greater ranges, and wu important technology in future sig processing in satellites, radar, and co munication systems. Superconduc i motors may even allow submarines

operate more quietly one day, ^{maK 0} them more difficult to detect.

As with most developments that ¹¹ change, there are two perspectives garding this emerging technology- ^j_S

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no way to eliminate resistance, even in the most efficient conductors.

Onnes later discovered superconduc­tivity in other materials. In each case, the material had to be cooled to within sev­eral degrees K of absolute zero. The cooling was accomplished by bathing the superconducting material in liquid he­lium. (Helium liquifies at 4° K.) Once the material had cooled to this temperature, it became a superconductor. Onnes intro­duced a superconductive material in the shape of a ring, and cooled it in liquid helium. One year after removing the source of electricity, the current still flowed undiminished in the supercon­ductor.

The superconductivity theory would appear to be an electrician’s dream. However, the extreme cooling procedure remained one of the many obstacles to applying superconductivity to real-world uses, and the equipment needed to manu­facture superconductors was (and still is) very expensive. Another problem was the superconductor’s inability to support a large magnetic field. It was not until the 1940s that the magnetic field problems were solved. And it is only very recently that the problems of extreme cooling have been overcome. Still, in a cost/ benefit analysis, the cooling costs for superconductors far outweigh the savings that they offer over conventional conduc­tors. It is for these reasons that supercon­ductivity has remained in the laboratory.

There are two ways to overcome the cooling problem. One way is to find an alternative to liquid helium. The second method is to raise the temperature at which materials become superconductive (that is, the critical temperature), which would enable less costly and less compli­cated systems to be used. Scientists have managed to raise the critical temperature in small increments by combining materi­als to be used as superconductors. In 1933, the critical temperature had in­creased to 10° K. In 1969, the tempera­ture “soared” to 20° K, the temperature at which less expensive hydrogen lique­fies. In 1973, the critical temperature rose to 23° K. In 1986, two IBM re­searchers in Zurich, Switzerland, man­aged to construct a ceramic material that became superconductive at 30° K. This discovery prompted other researchers to work with ceramics, and later that year, the temperature was up to 39° K.

Then in February 1987, Paul Chu and his research team at the University of Houston developed a superconductor with a critical temperature of 98° K. A significant barrier had once again been broken, because nitrogen liquefies at 77° K. Liquid nitrogen is inexpensive and easily carried about in insulated ther­moses. The new materials cannot support as much electricity as the older supercon­ductors, but scientists are getting closer to developing a material that will work at room temperature.

Superconductors offer major benefits over normal conductors. First, they func­tion without energy loss, so they may be used in place of conventional conductors to save energy. Because superconductors have no energy loss, they do not give off any heat. If superconductors are used in­stead of conventional conductors, electri­cal circuits may be packed closer together without heat buildup and burnout. To­day’s superconductors can generate pow­erful magnetic fields using small su­perconducting electromagnets. Finally, superconductors may be used to create Josephson junctions: superconducting switches that act like transistors, but are much faster and do not generate heat. Josephson junctions are capable of switching 100 times faster than conven­tional resistors.

The capabilities and applications of superconductors are many. Signal pro­cessing, for example, can be made more sensitive, efficient, and faster. A major anticipated application of superconduc­tivity in electronics is in follow-on devel­opments and successors to the VHSIC program. Integrated circuits have truly revolutionized electronics in the last two decades and are used in most military electronic devices today.

Superconductivity will facilitate the design and construction of a new breed of integrated circuits with tremendous capa­bilities. As mentioned, heat is an enemy of integrated circuits, causing them to fail quickly if they operate at temperatures exceeding their design specifications. Replacing the electric circuits with super­conductors, which do not generate heat, will allow circuits to be packed closer together, thereby reducing the time re­quired for the electric signals to travel from one area to another. This will allow more complex and faster circuits to be fit­ted in a much smaller space. Such a de­sign will have tremendous implications in naval ships, where the lengths of electric cables range from 300,000 to more than a million feet to link the sophisticated radar and sonar systems, computer-controlled missiles, torpedoes, and guns on a single ship.

Superconductivity also has other space-saving applications for the Navy. For example, a computer using Joseph­son junctions that would be more power­ful than today’s most powerful super­computers could be built in an area no larger than a filing cabinet. Again, this

technology, even though it appears t will reduce the requirement to dev some worthwhile skills in today s tary personnel. Others contend tha should put money and effort into ^UP^ ing and improving today’s equip¹¹¹' Clearly, superchips and superconduc ^ will not be fully developed for at le^aS^ ^ years. That is enough time for mo today’s military personnel to retire- . what about future military profession ^ Leaders must take a good, hard 1° ^ emerging technology and determine it will affect their personnel, and P^ accordingly. There are no easy ans when deciding whether to replace an ^ dividual with technology. Obviously U. S. military can only maintain vantage over potential threats by ^u _t any available technology to the ¹ ^ extent possible. But, in addition. ■ should always be a highly skilled cian standing by—just in case the ° ^ ies go dead or somebody acciden pulls a plug out of the wall.

'Mark Root, “IBM Manassas Producing Hu'¹ _e|_£asC- VHSIC Chips for Defense,” IBM Press Manassas, Virginia, 9 May 1988.

²Mark Root, “IBM Delivers ‘Super^- pas* Power in the Air Force,” IBM Press Release, sas, Virginia, 13 July 1988.

“Robert Rcade, “VHSIC Improves D°D ‘“'Ti ogy, Defense Computing, July-August 19    *

⁵Ibid.

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Petty Officer Eisler is currently attending                in

Warfare “C” School at the Naval Training ^ je' Pensacola, Florida. He earned a bachelor o gree from Tulane University in 1988.