IBM Creates 1st Single Molecule Computer Circuit

Llowfyr writes "Yahoo has reports that IBM researchers have created the first ever single molecule computer circuits which may someday lead to a new class of smaller and faster computers that consume less power than today's machines. The IBM team made a `` voltage inverter '' -- one of the three fundamental logic circuits that are the basis for all of today's computers -- from a carbon nanotube, a tube-shaped molecule of carbon atoms that is 100,000 times thinner than a human hair. IBM scientists will present the achievement today at the 222nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society being held in Chicago and it appears in the web edition of the ACS' journal Nano Letters."

Comments

Re:i wonder

[blair1q]

Moore's law will hold for quite a long time, inasmuch as it's already been crocked by adapting it to apply to microprocessor computing power, when it was originally developed to describe memory-chip bit capacity.

Once it starts to break down for silicon-transistor circuits, the "capacity" metrics will be transferred to whatever follows.

The interesting thing about Moore's law is that it may be unprovably vague.

Einstein posed a theorem he said he never could prove:

If you travel from point A to point B at an average speed of v miles per hour (where B and A are more than v miles apart), there will always be an interval exactly v miles long that you will transit in exactly one hour.

How this relates to Moore's law is if you replace distance with transistor count, then along the way you will find intervals where you have doubled the transistor count in 18-24 months.

This feature allows hypesters every once in a while to prove to themselves that "it still works" to whatever precision they desire.

But they're not entirely dishonest, since this only works because Moore's law has a long-term stable average.

--Blair

I want to see more advanced software for it

[Billly Gates]

I would want to buy one of the first nano-computers as well but I think we both would be dissapointed initially. The problem is today's machines are already over powered for what most I would be more interested in something that takes advantage of the smallness and lots of extra CPU power. As it is today's desktops are way overpowered for most applications. MY computer compiles all my code in a blink of an eye and if you lowered the CPU speed by a few hundred megahertz, I would probably not even know the difference. What I am waiting for are nano-computers integrated in nail polish, wall paper, and clothes with verbal interfaces like Star Trek TNG. Would it be sweet to have you clothes download the next style automatically instead of buying new clothes or wouldn't it be cool to say "computer, play cnn news", and your whole wallpaper turns into a television screen playing the news.

With embedded nano-based technology this will be a reality. I have serve ADHD and if I can have a computer do real research with a verbal interface and advanced AI to interpret what I ask, and retrieve the data, I could write a research paper in a third of the time. No more library visits! It's all retrieved for me. I love LCARS on star trek's enterprise D where you can receive and information you wanted just by asking.

My guess is the first generation of nano-desktops will be mediocre because they will run the same software as today, or Microsoft will take years to write a version of windows for it so it stays locked up in R&D labs for years. Kind of like IA-64 syndrome. It already runs Linux but Intel wont release it because Microsoft is not done writing windows for it. I guess the business world does not see reality existing outside of windows. Sigh.

Anyway the extra apps like IA, verbal speech recognition, advanced clustering, pixel generation, and advanced networking would come years after the technology is out. Perhaps the Gnu community can address these needs as corporations will try to propritize the market and exploit it for high prices.

The problem is:

[Tazzy531]

...which may someday lead to a new class of smaller and faster computers that consume less power than today's machines.

The problem is that with all this power, we still have lazy programmers that aren't writing cleaner, more efficient code, basically negating all the advances that have been made in processing technology. I mean, computers today are a million times faster than they were years ago, but do we see any major increase in speed?

Images to go with the article

[los furtive]

Check out the pictures and graphics that IBM has made available.

And let us not dwell on the fact that I submitted a better version of this article early in the morning with more links than the one they decided to go with(sulking ends now).