One of the topics we've covered multiple times at ExtremeTech is the difficulty of continuing to scale semiconductor technology, and the related problem of improving chip performance without ...

Way back in the salad days of digital computing (the 1940s and '50s), computers were made of vacuum tubes -- big, hot, clunky devices that, when you got right down to it, were essentially glorified ...

A vacuum tube, known as the first electronic device, is used to switch, amplify, or commutate electric signals. In the past, vacuum tubes functioned as a main part of a diverse range of electronic ...

For most of us, vacuum tubes haven’t appeared in any of our schematics or BOMs in — well, ever. Once mass-manufacturing made reliable transistors cheap enough for hobbyists, vacuum tubes became pretty ...

In the past, vacuum tubes were used for amplifying electrical signals, but have long been replaced by other devices such as MOSFETs, which require lower power and less cost to fabricate. Researchers ...

Regardless of the mythical qualities that are all too often attributed to vacuum tubes, they are still components that can be damaged and wear out over time. Much like with transistors and kin, they ...

A variety of linear models are available to represent common active electronic devices such as transistors and vacuum tubes. Devices operating under large-signal conditions often require nonlinear ...

Prior to Bell Labs’ first working transistor in 1947, which ushered in the advent of semiconductor technology and the computer age, every long-distance telephone call, radio and television broadcast, ...