演讲MP3+双语文稿:你的电子设备还能跟上软件更新速度吗?

听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:你的电子设备还能跟上软件更新速度吗?，希望你会喜欢！

【演讲人及介绍】Karl Skjonnemand

技术开发人员-作为一名充满激情的技术领导者，Karl Skjonnemand渴望解决高级技术问题。

【演讲主题】未来的自组装计算机芯片

【演讲文稿-中英文】

翻译者 Chen Yunru 校对 Lipeng Chen

00:13

Computers used to be as big as a room. But now they fit in your pocket, on your wrist and can even be implanted inside of your body. How cool is that? And this has been enabled by the miniaturization of transistors, which are the tiny switches in the circuits at the heart of our computers. And it's been achieved through decades of development and breakthroughs in science and engineering and of billions of dollars of investment. But it's given us vast amounts of computing, huge amounts of memory and the digital revolution that we all experience and enjoy today.

过去，计算机和房间一样庞大。但是如今你可以把计算机揣进兜里，戴在手腕上，甚至是嵌入身体中。多棒啊！ 这些都得益于晶体管的微型化，晶体管是电路中的小开关，位于计算机的核心区域。晶体管经过数十年的研发、 科学工程上的突破 和数十亿美元的投入之后取得成功。它赋予了我们强大的计算能力、 海量的记忆功能 以及我们共同经历的数字革命。

00:53

But the bad news is, we're about to hit a digital roadblock, as the rate of miniaturization of transistors is slowing down. And this is happening at exactly the same time as our innovation in software is continuing relentlessly with artificial intelligence and big data. And our devices regularly perform facial recognition or augment our reality or even drive cars down our treacherous, chaotic roads. It's amazing. But if we don't keep up with the appetite of our software, we could reach a point in the development of our technology where the things that we could do with software could, in fact, be limited by our hardware.

但是坏消息是，随着晶体管小型化的速率不断下降，我们即将迎来数字化的瓶颈。与此同时，我们在软件方面不断创新，人工智能和大数据蓬勃发展。我们的设备可以进行 面部识别以及现实增强，可以在危险、混乱的道路上 进行无人驾驶。简直不可思议！ 但如果我们跟不上软件发展的速度，就可能会达到科技发展的瓶颈，软件发展会受到限制，来自硬件发展的限制。

01:41

We've all experienced the frustration of an old smartphone or tablet grinding slowly to a halt over time under the ever-increasing weight of software updates and new features. And it worked just fine when we bought it not so long ago. But the hungry software engineers have eaten up all the hardware capacity over time. The semiconductor industry is very well aware of this and is working on all sorts of creative solutions, such as going beyond transistors to quantum computing or even working with transistors in alternative architectures such as neural networks to make more robust and efficient circuits. But these approaches will take quite some time, and we're really looking for a much more immediate solution to this problem.

我们都经历过 在不断增多的软件更新 和新功能的重压下，老版智能手机和平板带来的失望感，加载缓慢甚至是停滞卡顿。我们刚买这些设备的时候，它们运转得还不错。但是随着软件的更新，硬件渐渐跟不上了。半导体行业已经意识到了这一点，并且致力于摆脱这一困境。比如说超越晶体管到量子计算，或者在替代架构中使用晶体管，比如在神经网络中，创造出更坚固有效的电路。但是这些方法都很耗时，我们正在寻找解决这个问题的捷径。

02:34

The reason why the rate of miniaturization of transistors is slowing down is due to the ever-increasing complexity of the manufacturing process. The transistor used to be a big, bulky device, until the invent of the integrated circuit based on pure crystalline silicon wafers. And after 50 years of continuous development, we can now achieve transistor features dimensions down to 10 nanometers. You can fit more than a billion transistors in a single square millimeter of silicon. And to put this into perspective: a human hair is 100 microns across. A red blood cell, which is essentially invisible, is eight microns across, and you can place 12 across the width of a human hair. But a transistor, in comparison, is much smaller, at a tiny fraction of a micron across. You could place more than 260 transistors across a single red blood cell or more than 3,000 across the width of a human hair. It really is incredible nanotechnology in your pocket right now. And besides the obvious benefit of being able to place more, smaller transistors on a chip, smaller transistors are faster switches, and smaller transistors are also more efficient switches.

晶体管小型化速率下降，是由制造过程日益复杂导致的。过去，晶体管是 很大、很笨重的设备，直到基于纯晶硅片的 集成电路的问世，晶体管才不断变小。在持续五十年的发展后，如今我们可以使晶体管的特性尺寸 达到10纳米以下。你可以把超过十亿个的晶体管 放在一个一平方毫米的硅片中。为了更形象地描述这一点，我将提供一些数据： 人的头发直径是100微米。一个肉眼几乎看不见的血红细胞，直径是8微米。头发的宽度几乎是血红细胞的12倍。但是相比之下，晶体管更小，直径远小于1微米。晶体管的宽度，是一个血红细胞的260分之一，是一个头发丝宽度的三千分之一。这个不可思议的纳米科技 现在就被你揣在兜里。除了显而易见的好处，即我们可以放置更多、 更小的晶体管在芯片中，更小的晶片还意味着更快的转换速度，也意味着更高的转换效率。

04:02

So this combination has given us lower cost, higher performance and higher efficiency electronics that we all enjoy today.

这个结合赋予我们 更低成本、更高性能 和更高效率的电子设备，在今天为我们带来了极大的方便。

04:14

To manufacture these integrated circuits, the transistors are built up layer by layer, on a pure crystalline silicon wafer. And in an oversimplified sense, every tiny feature of the circuit is projected onto the surface of the silicon wafer and recorded in a light-sensitive material and then etched through the light-sensitive material to leave the pattern in the underlying layers. And this process has been dramatically improved over the years to give the electronics performance we have today.

生产这些集成电路，需要我们将晶体管 在一个纯晶硅片上 一层层地叠加起来。简言之，电路的每一个微小特征 都被投射在 硅片表面，被记录在光敏材料上，然后被蚀刻在光敏材料上，将图样留在底层。多年来，这一过程 得到了极大的改进，从而赋予了电子设备今日的表现。

04:50

But as the transistor features get smaller and smaller, we're really approaching the physical limitations of this manufacturing technique. The latest systems for doing this patterning have become so complex that they reportedly cost more than 100 million dollars each. And semiconductor factories contain dozens of these machines. So people are seriously questioning: Is this approach long-term viable? But we believe we can do this chip manufacturing in a totally different and much more cost-effective way using molecular engineering and mimicking nature down at the nanoscale dimensions of our transistors.

但是随着晶体管越变越小，我们迎来了制造技术的 物理极限。最新制造底样的系统 变得十分复杂，导致每件设备的成本 高达1亿多美金。而每家半导体工厂 都需要采购大量的这些设备。于是人们开始正视这个问题： 这个方法是长期可行的吗？ 但是我们相信我们可以 对芯片制造方法做出改变，用一种全新的、更划算的方式，使用分子工程和模拟自然的方法，在我们晶体管的纳米维度上。

05:37

As I said, the conventional manufacturing takes every tiny feature of the circuit and projects it onto the silicon. But if you look at the structure of an integrated circuit, the transistor arrays, many of the features are repeated millions of times. It's a highly periodic structure. So we want to take advantage of this periodicity in our alternative manufacturing technique. We want to use self-assembling materials to naturally form the periodic structures that we need for our transistors. We do this with the materials, then the materials do the hard work of the fine patterning, rather than pushing the projection technology to its limits and beyond. Self-assembly is seen in nature in many different places, from lipid membranes to cell structures, so we do know it can be a robust solution. If it's good enough for nature, it should be good enough for us. So we want to take this naturally occurring, robust self-assembly and use it for the manufacturing of our semiconductor technology.

如我所说，传统制造方法将 电路的每一个微小特征 都投射到了晶片上。但是如果你关注 一个集成电路的结构、 晶体管的排列，你会发现这些微小特征 被重复了数百万次。这是一种高度周期性的结构。所以我们想在我们的替代生产技术中 利用这种周期性。我们想使用自组装材料，自然地组建周期性结构 来构建晶体管。我们用材料进行试验，让这些材料完成 精细图案的制作工作，而不是试图在投射技术上寻找突破。自组装原理在大自然中随处可见，从脂质膜到细胞结构，所以我们认为 这将会是有效的解决方法。如果该方法可以应用于大自然，同理可用于芯片产业。所以这一切就顺其自然了， 将稳固的自组装方法 应用到半导体的生产中去。

06:48

One type of self-assemble material -- it's called a block co-polymer -- consists of two polymer chains just a few tens of nanometers in length. But these chains hate each other. They repel each other, very much like oil and water or my teenage son and daughter.

一种自组装材料—— 名为嵌段共聚物—— 由两条长度只有 几十纳米的聚合物链组成，但是这些聚合物链彼此排斥。它们彼此排斥，就像水油不相溶，就像我青春期的儿女。

07:06

（Laughter）

（笑声）

07:08

But we cruelly bond them together, creating an inbuilt frustration in the system, as they try to separate from each other. And in the bulk material, there are of these, and the similar components try to stick together, and the opposing components try to separate from each other at the same time. And this has a built-in frustration, a tension in the system. So it moves around, it squirms until a shape is formed. And the natural self-assembled shape that is formed is nanoscale, it's regular, it's periodic, and it's long range, which is exactly what we need for our transistor arrays.

但是我们强制使它们结合在一起，在系统中创造一种嵌入式窘组，即便它们想要相互分离。一块巨型材料，包含着数十亿个这样的聚合物链，相似的化合物会粘结在一起，同时互斥的化合物则会 相互分离。这是嵌入式的窘组，一种系统的张力。所以这些化合物四处移动，蠕动直到形成一个形状。天然的自组装形状是纳米级的，它有规律和周期性，还很长。这就是我们在晶体管排列中所需要的。

07:49

So we can use molecular engineering to design different shapes of different sizes and of different periodicities. So for example, if we take a symmetrical molecule, where the two polymer chains are similar length, the natural self-assembled structure that is formed is a long, meandering line, very much like a fingerprint. And the width of the fingerprint lines and the distance between them is determined by the lengths of our polymer chains but also the level of built-in frustration in the system.

所以我们可以应用分子工程 来设计不同尺寸的不同形状，以及不同周期性的不同形状。比如说，如果我们 选用一种对称分子，它的两条聚合物链长度相似，则自然的自组装结构就会是 长的曲线形，像指纹一样。指纹线的宽度 和其间的距离，不仅取决于聚合物链的长度，还取决于系统内嵌窘组的级别。

08:23

And we can even create more elaborate structures if we use unsymmetrical molecules, where one polymer chain is significantly shorter than the other. And the self-assembled structure that forms in this case is with the shorter chains forming a tight ball in the middle, and it's surrounded by the longer, opposing polymer chains, forming a natural cylinder. And the size of this cylinder and the distance between the cylinders, the periodicity, is again determined by how long we make the polymer chains and the level of built-in frustration.

我们还可以创造更复杂的结构。如果我们使用非对称分子，其中一条聚合物链显著短于另一条。这种情况下的自组装结构是这样的： 短链在中间形成一个牢固的圆球，被包围在更长的、 相互排斥的聚合物链中，形成一个自然的圆柱体。这个圆柱体的尺寸 以及圆柱体之间的距离、周期性，取决于我们选用的聚合物链的长度，以及内嵌窘组的水平。

09:01

So in other words, we're using molecular engineering to self-assemble nanoscale structures that can be lines or cylinders the size and periodicity of our design. We're using chemistry, chemical engineering, to manufacture the nanoscale features that we need for our transistors.

换言之，我们在利用分子工程 获得自组装的纳米结构。这些结构可以是线形的、圆柱形的，同时也符合我们设计的周期性。我们在使用化学、化学工程 来制造我们晶体管 所需的纳米级特征。

09:25

But the ability to self-assemble these structures only takes us half of the way, because we still need to position these structures where we want the transistors in the integrated circuit. But we can do this relatively easily using wide guide structures that pin down the self-assembled structures, anchoring them in place and forcing the rest of the self-assembled structures to lie parallel, aligned with our guide structure. For example, if we want to make a fine, 40-nanometer line, which is very difficult to manufacture with conventional projection technology, we can manufacture a 120-nanometer guide structure with normal projection technology, and this structure will align three of the 40-nanometer lines in between. So the materials are doing the most difficult fine patterning.

但是自组装这些结构的能力 只解决了一半的问题，因为我们还需要排列这些结构，使得晶体管们可以形成集成电路。但是这些东西相对更简单，使用宽导向结构来固定自组装结构，将它们锚定到位，使剩余的自组装结构 可以平行排列，从而与我们的导向结构保持一致。比如，如果我们想制作一个 精细的、40纳米长的线形，这对传统的投射技术 而言是非常困难的，我们可以先制作 一个120纳米的导向结构，使用普通的投射技术，这个结构将把 3个40纳米长的线形排列在一起。所以这些材料在进行 最困难的精细复写。

10:27

And we call this whole approach "directed self-assembly." The challenge with directed self-assembly is that the whole system needs to align almost perfectly, because any tiny defect in the structure could cause a transistor failure. And because there are of transistors in our circuit, we need an almost molecularly perfect system. But we're going to extraordinary measures to achieve this, from the cleanliness of our chemistry to the careful processing of these materials in the semiconductor factory to remove even the smallest nanoscopic defects.

我们称这种方法为： 直接自组装法。这种方法的挑战在于，整个系统都需要完美地排列，因为结构中任何微小的缺陷 都会导致晶体管的失效。因为我们电路中存在数十亿个晶体管，我们需要一个无比精细完美的系统。但我们需要付出非凡的努力，来达到这一目标。从我们的化学清洁 到在半导体工厂中的 这些材料的精细处理 从而消除纳米级别的最小失误。

11:09

So directed self-assembly is an exciting new disruptive technology, but it is still in the development stage. But we're growing in confidence that we could, in fact, introduce it to the semiconductor industry as a revolutionary new manufacturing process in just the next few years. And if we can do this, if we're successful, we'll be able to continue with the cost-effective miniaturization of transistors, continue with the spectacular expansion of computing and the digital revolution. And what's more, this could even be the dawn of a new era of molecular manufacturing. How cool is that?

所以直接自组装法是一种 全新的，令人激动的颠覆性技术。但是它还在发展阶段。但是我们有信心在未来的几年里，在半导体行业中 引入这种全新的 变革型制造方法，如果我们成功了，我们将能够继续进行 低成本的晶体管小型化、 计算能力的快速发展 以及数字的变革。除此之外，这是将会是 分子制造新纪元的曙光。听上去相当不错吧！

11:50

Thank you.

谢谢。

11:51

（Applause）

（掌声）