New Horizon For Nanotech

UserID 3.14 writes "It looks like faster chip-building tehnology is coming, and it may usher in the next wave of MEMS and nanotechnology with it. This article from Science Daily talks about a new electron-beam photolithography machine at JPL that rasterizes 10 times faster than the previous standard with a beam imprint that's half the size. Chip prototyping will go faster and the researchers there will be able to deal with features that are molecule-sized. Best of all, if you want to use the machine, they give a contact for further info."

Comments

Cool!

[atrowe]

The article doesn't mention cost, but I would assume that this technology would be signifigantly cheaper than the billions of dollars it currently takes to open a semiconducter fab. This decreased cost will make it possible for the technology to create cheap, powerful processors available to the masses.

This would also make it possible for the open-source movement to expand into hardware as well as software. Imagine renting time at the local fab to sample a processor that was designed entirely by the community. If this technology pans out, we could eventually adapt all the advantages of today's open-source software into low cost open-source hardware. I can't wait to see what advances in microprocessor technology will evolve once the open-source community sets it's mind to developing a free(as in speech) processor. Yay!