Today’s web 2.0 applications are wonderful and generally simple to use. All this simplicity is based on many layers of complexity and technical know-how that goes unnoticeable. There is the software we use, the server that provides all the necessary data, our operating system, our PC hardware, etc., etc. And on the most basic level is the humble transistor that celebrated yesterday its 60th birthday!
The transistor’s life started with the simple goal of current amplification. In a simplistic description there is two currents that flow through a transistor, the high current that we need and the low current that we use to control the higher current. Suddenly, humanity was liberated from the size and inefficiency of vacuum tubes. On the way it became apparent that transistors are excellent switches, resulting in the ones and zeros that form the basis of the digital world. Design improvements for this purpose have limited current leakages leading to power efficiency and the shrinking of huge numbers of transistors in tiny dimensions. Transistors are still used in analogue applications, like for example in our hi-fi power amps. Even there however, modern digital designs -again transistor based- start to bear fruit with efficiencies of the order of 90%! Read the rest of this entry »
