As a person who has made bare semiconductor wafers since the 1970's I can say there are just too many advantages to silicon. In the 1980's I was told that in 5 years silicon would be dead and GaAs would be everywhere. SiC was the same way in the 2000's. Silicon keeps winning because it's cheap, easy to make oxides, easy to machine (slice and polish), and can be grown into crystals too heavy for me to lift without help. I've worked with Ge, Si, GaP, GaAs, InP, InAs, InSb, SiC and GaN.

The biggest issue with Gallium Nitride is its low hole-mobility. The huge difference in electron and hole mobilities makes complementary MOS (CMOS) circuits difficult. CMOS is the fundamental building block of all modern digital integrated circuits. Once we solve these issues, GaN could make Dennard scaling(which hit a wall for Silicon devices around 2006) possible again. When it comes to density scaling, Silicon still has some life left thanks to future improvements such as gate all around / nano-wire transistors. We should be able to reach 600-700 million transistors / mm^2 with silicon. During the silicon to alternate material transition era, new computing architectures may be developed to make more efficient use of existing transistor densities. Dataflow CPU architectures may yield further performance improvements by tapping into the instruction-level parallelism potential much more efficiently than current von Neumann architectures.

I'm a nanoelectronics engineer and this is a very well-researched video. Very well-presented too. Thanks!

10:41 My boy NASA rocking the comic sans.

I love this series, no fluff just knowledge

These videos are the reason I subbed. Don’t know why Engadget has such range of quality aka their weird, poorly researched buzz feed style videos. Keep it up!

Every time I thought to myself “I wonder if they could...” you went down the same path of inquiry. Favorite series on UKposts. Other explainer videos wish they could be this.

This series needs way more attention.. the knowledge you gain after watching it is freakin insane ! keep the good work, really appreciate it

Wow so cool. I did my PhD in GaN doping with Rare-Earth ions for photoluminescence between 2003-2007. It was indeed an issue to get high quality GaN. I was using ion implantation to dope GaN, which creates even more defects. To get rid of those defects you need to heat (anneal) the material to above decomposition temperature of GaN, which was a problem. My contribution was to slightly head up the material during implantation and avoid defects while they are being created. I miss those research days...

Didn't expect an Engadget series to become one of my favourite yt shows in 2020. Thanks for the great work and hope to see more!

More than the tons of research, the logical organization and presentation was so coherent. Good Video!

This series should be its own channel, it's one of my favorite things to watch, but Engadget spams my sub box with trashy news. So it's own channel would be awesome!

Keep the nitty gritty details coming! I'm so grateful for this series, thank you!

Really enjoy this series! Keep it up! (also thank-you for adding in the references as well, it's nice to read up on some of the stuff that caught my eye)

Wow the discussion on the power supply stuff and schematics really brought me back to my college days. Great, great research here!

Very refreshing to have high quality technical content from the larger publications. Love this series!

This will be an awesome leap from old electronics. And thanks for the explanation of "band gap", "valence" etc.

If only more UKposts publishers put up such well made videos. I can't say I've learned anything I didn't already know but the topic was perfectly summarized. It was a real pleasure to watch.

This is the best description of the workings of a transistor that I've seen on youtube. Well done.

This is hands down one of the best explanations of GaN that I've seen yet. Great job in balancing the technical explanations while not utterly overwhelming the viewer. Thanks for such a fantastic resource.

Much respect for the high quality research and video! I appreciate the depth of research work done to produce this great video. Thanks!

Superb! Best explainer show on UKposts. The diagrams are incredibly helpful!!

wow! These videos are like a gold mine for electrical engineers. I learned way more in this one video than all those other engineering channels combined. Keep it up!

The quality of content here is fantastic. Excellent work. Please keep going with this series!

You rocked it! The way you explained how computing could improve with Gallium nitride made it very easy to understand. It showed that you researched, found the perfect graphics, layered explanations, and our visuals were very helpful. Keep it up!

Man this was a thorough video! I commend you for doing so much research. Learned a lot

I didn't know this channel before. This video is in a whole different league than what I would expect from a product placement channel.

Liked and subscribed on the basis of that. Well done. Very well done. So important to include the trade-offs and challenges into a rounded piece. You have also given me a crazy idea which has about 0.0001 percent chance of working; but I’ll explore the basics and then see where it takes me!

Upscaled is awesome, thanks to Chris!

Wow fascinating. These are really amazing. Appreciate all the research that went into this.

EV engineer here. SiC MOSFET is used for high power/high temperature (where higher thermal conductivity matters) application such as Traction motor inverter and GaN is/will be used for higher frequency (> 300 kHz) application like the Onboard Charger (the AC Level 2 charger at 3 to ~20 kW) and DC/DC converter. GaN is being explored for traction inverter use case but at the moment is limited to ~600V_dc application. GaN on SiC substrate would be even better but difficult yield and expensive to manufacture. Thanks for the video, very informative :)

This was tremendously informative, very detailed without being dry, engages with the academic work being done while staying interesting without annoying hype or overstatement. I've watched other "explainers" from other outlets like Seeker or Vox and they almost never tell me something I don't already know because they spend the whole time treating me like an idiot and never get around to the good stuff. This was brilliantly done, I'll definitely watch more videos on the channel in the future.

I am doing my master thesis to build a power electronic circuit using Gallium Nitride. You pretty much covered everything that took me 2 months to gather from my research. Thums up :)

This was hands down one of the best explanations of the underlying physics iv heard/seen. Hats off to you guys. Although i wouldnt say no to an even more indepth explanation with more complex physics. But thats just me ;)

I feel this series is continued to be referenced years later. Please preserve on more platforms.

You included the sources in the description! Subscribed! keep doing that!

Wow, you really try to make these videos explain to the unstudied and still give fresh news to the studied, I love that!

This is a fantastic video. So much great information, and the examples on how things work was excellent. I wish this was around 20 years ago when I studied some of this at uni. I’m sure my lecturers would have found this very useful to explain how components function.

This is so cool!!! Thank you for the video, and thank you very much for providing sources. I love this kind of coverage b

Absolutely great video, as usually easy to understand yet jam-packed with information. Heard about GaN before but never really so in-depth as in this video. Upscaled knocks it out of the park again, best series of Engadget by far and together with Processor / Dieter Bohn (The Verge) and MKBHD my favourite tech show on UKposts.

I know this makes me a bad person, but my biggest takeaway from this video was that the NASA High Temperature GaN Microprocessor for Space Applications slide at 10:42 was set in Comic Sans.

Awesome presentation! I have a background in electronics and I see that the information was accurate at a basic level and should also make sense on a laypersons level. The information was logically layed-out with who, what , where, why from beginning to end with solid facts. Thanks to Chris Schodt and his team!

Very well researched and informative. Nice job all around! Great channel.

This is one of the most informative videos on CPU architecture I have ever seen for a layman, thank you for this.

WOW, now there was a metric ton of information. I am going to have to watch this one 10 more times to learn everything here (on my 3rd now). Thanks for the hard work of researching this!

Man so good video, you really feel how much time you spend researching stuff keep it going

A very well-researched video, Didn't think I would find such video on youtube. Subbed!

Really well-researched and presented! I love this kind of high quality content!

I don't understand most of what he says, but he says it so well I still watch Upscaled every single time!

suuuuper interesting, again. keep this stuff coming. many many thanks :o)

That was well researched and produced. I learned a lot! Thank you for doing this (and right before the July 4th USA Holiday.. just noticed that!)

Excellent presentation! A near-perfect blend of simplification without loss of necessary information. You didn't have to tell me it took a lot of research. To me, it was obvious. :D Thanks for the very enlightening talk.

Glad i stumbled on this. great work done

Really interesting! Keep up the great work!

Again, top-notch dive into the subject by Engadget. Love it, please make more!

Great research delivered into an easy to understand and exciting video. Kudos Chris -thank you!

Awesome job -- looking forward to more such informative pieces! :)

Impressed with how in depth and not watered down this video is.

Refreshing to see a no BS content in a mainstream channel. Keep it up.

keep this series going, love it!!!

Wow, awesome video! I’m just beginning to learn about microelectronic fab in my summer REU. This was an awesome supplemental!

First time i've seen one of your videos. Informative. Interesting. In the best tradition of some of the Discovery Channel's best work from the late 1990s, early 2000s.

Thank you for the depth! Great video

Loved it! Quality doco! Loved to see one on graphane and why its still stuck

Love this series! So glad I discovered this recently.

What a great video. Very entertaining. Very informative. The effort put in really shows.

Chris's videos are the best thing that has happened to Engadget in recent years. I think I know a lot about tech but Chris always has a lot of details and information of the industry and processes I didn't know.

12:10 A little correction Because of the different crystall structure (cubic vs. hexagonal) you can not grow GaN on Si. You normally grow GaN on sapphire (Al2O3)

Great, informative video about a technology that has actually become practical to use in the past few years (not like a lot of those other "breakthroughs"). Recently purchased a GaN laptop charger and it's astounding how small it is, 65W delivery in maybe 1/3 the volume of a Si based charger. Can't wait for the tech to advance.

If I’m not mistaken, it was the Cray-3’s troubled development lifecycle that led some wag to comment that “Gallium Arsenide is the [semiconductor] technology of tomorrow and always will be”. Just thought I’d share, given the preamble before the plunge into Gallium Nitrate.

Really beginning to fall in love with this series.

Thanks for the explanation! So helpful! Please make another video talking about battery. We're stuck in Li-ion and Li-po for soo loong.

💠 Simply beyond brilliant 💠 Massive Kudos to the entire "Upscaled" team... What an amazing content and an even better presentation delivery 🏆 🏆 🏆

Chris, very well presented my friend. A very interesting watch. Thanks

Absolutely loved the video. well presented well researched. Quality content

Totally mind bending, fantastic, awesome 🔥🔥😯😯😯. Hand down THE BEST TECH. SERIES ON UKposts. Please do next episode on FUTURE OF BATTERY TECHNOLOGY. THANKS CHRIS 😊👍

This was a brilliant video, made me subscribe instantly. The more stuff this thorough on Engadget the beter

such an awesome vid, thank you!

Well researched, comprehensive and easy to understand video. Excellent!

Oh yeah, upscaled! Instantly hyped! :D

I have worked with GaN. So far I haven't seen compelling evidence anyone being able to make GaN wafers. Thin layers are grown on Siliocn or Sapphire wafers. The trick is to put a thin layer of GaN on a great heat conductor such as SiC or Diamond to be able to make efficient devices. The cost of such ciruits are far higher than silicon since the bonding of GaN to other heat conducting substrates is far higher than making devices on silicon. This is why GaN is normally used for high priced power electronics. GaN can actually replace radar tubes due to its high band gap and the weight of such tubes is more than a 100 times lower than conventional radar tubes but the cost is far higher.

That was an excellent and inspiring presentation. Thank you!

This is still one of the best youtube content series ever!!!

I was hesitant to watch this. However, I am glad I did. The topic was very well explained in this video. Subbed.

this was seriously well done, kudos.

This is incredibly interesting Gallium Nitrade GAN Could really revolutionize chip industry along with the rest of the electronic circuitry industry. Fantastic video - really enjoy the learning potential packed in to this!

Thanks for your considerations about 1% testing. This is actually what I focus on when I'm doing comparisons. I want stable vs. 10% faster than another configuration so I give 1% low high priority.

1:36 You have to admit that Gallium Nightride is the perfect name for an ‘80s revival. ;)

Liked and subscribed. The factual information, here, is profound and I now have another reason to be excited about technological growth.

Wow! Amazing presentation. Well done.

He explains Chemistry better than my chemistry teacher from my college!!!

Very well explained, thank you

Very interesting video simply explained! Well done, thank you!

Anybody else been an Engadget fan since 2004? I remember the website launch haha. Awesome video guys!

Quality video. I'm very pleasantly surprised!

I love these videos. They are so interesting and I learn new things!

This is a great video - concise but packed full of interesting information.

Thanks, great explanation of a not so easy subject

Well organised and it's clear he has done lots of research!

Good delivery. You didn't lose me for a second