I got an ad in my email today from NewEgg advertising the new 45nm, Hafnium-based processors from Intel. I’d never heard of Hafnium before, so I pulled up Wikipedia to see what the scoop is. It’s in the same family as Titanium, is closely related to Zirconium, and oh, by the way, we’re probably going to run out of it in around 10 years unless new supplies appear.
I wonder if this affects Intel at all? Ten years is a fairly long time in the CPU world and I would guess their usage of Hafnium in the transistor is astonishingly small, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of it laying around. According to Wikipedia, it’s rather hard to process out of Zirconium and it’s mostly used by the nuclear power industry in control rods.
Well, it’s just one chemist’s prediction based on incomplete data, so nothing to really get in a tizzy over. The other predictions from the report are equally interesting though. Here’s the breakdown:
| Element | Time to run out, years | Main Source |
|---|---|---|
| Antimony | 15-20 | China |
| Hafnium | ~10 | Australia |
| Indium | 5-10 | Canada |
| Platinum | 15 | South Africa |
| Silver | 15-20 | Poland |
| Tantalum | 20-30 | Australia |
| Zinc | 20-30 | China, USA |
Interesting stuff.