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Sandia Builds Micromechanical 'Device Driver'
DanielRavenNest writes: "Sandia Labs has built a tiny bicycle chain type drive out of silicon. This allows one micromechanical motor to drive multiple devices scattered about a chip."
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What about a belt drive? Or a shaft drive if you really want some nano-torque?
These guys are living in the past, man!
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Other than that this stuff is made out of silicon, I don't know much about these devices. Are they etched like integrated circuits? And here's what baffles me...If they're etched, how in the heck can they actually make gears and stuff spin and move around?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Solid-state good.
This looks like more solutions to non-problems.
Can I stick a baseball card on it, and hear the racket? All the neighborhood geeks will be so jealous...Hey, this Mickey Mantle isn't worth anything, is it?
Slashdotted in 4 minutes... those .gov servers blow ;)
Not every task will be suited to a solid state solution. Some will require mechanistic activity or (another alternative to solid state) biological activity. In the case of things like nanites that are going to navigate throughout the body and do stuff, this kind of thing could be useful (or a springboard to something useful).
:)
But my first thought was "once they have the chain, then they can build the nano-cycle... but where will they find all those itsy-bitsy Clowns? And how many can dance on the head of a pin?"
All right, I probably do need therapy
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Here's Google's mirror, since it looks like this site was /.'ed.
The application that Sandia has given, at least in the past, for their micromachine efforts is better locks for nuclear warheads. So, the analogy that the article makes to sewing machine factories only makes sense if they were nuclear sewing machines.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Perhaps I should have selected "Technology" rather than "Science". Anyway, I found it at robots.net, another mod_virgule site. Get your robot news there first!
-- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
here (free regblah.)u its/10NEXT.html
AND for cut and pasters: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/technology/circ
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
this is great news for the little computer elves that do all the calculations in my computer. They've been slaving away on their abicii for years, now i can buy them bicycles with nano-chains and stuff!
This is just cool. One can think of all kinds of applications for this. Even dumb ones. I do agree it could have uses in military technology as well.
Could they use this to build motors in the top of chips and come up with some sort of package that allows the nano (and hopefully silent) fans to cool a CPU? Just a thought.
Gorkman
I'm not terribly well informed on how these things work on chips currently. How much smaller will chips really become if you were to put several shafts to such a chain? And just how reliable would would of these chains be when hooked to multiple shafts? A friend of mine told me once that the chains weren't currently put on multiple shafts because they wouldn't handle the stress, so is this smaller chain really going to make chips smaller?
Disclaimer. I could be completely wrong on everything here. I am ignorant of circuitry.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
All you need to do is lithograph a 2-micron long hairpin, and that sucker's yours!!!
"The 50-link silicon microchain is designed to transmit power somewhat like the drive belt in a 19th-century sewing factory. There, a central engine shaft powered by steam turned drive belts to power distant work stations -- for example, sewing machines -- before the dawn of the age of electricity."
Great, now we can look forward to the nanobots getting maimed and mangled in miniature industrial accidents. Let's hope the bots don't "organize" too well and go on strike because of this.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
this isnt very interesting at all
ive been pretty apathetic in the past & this has just let me continue my apathy
Many people are talking about lots of uses for this thing, but nothing yet struck me as in: "yeah, if it can do this, it will really make a difference"... any examples?
Consider hooking this thing up to a Brownian Ratchet, such as discribed by Feynman in his lectures. (For those not familiar with a Brownian Ratchet, this page give a good introduction and a cool Java thingy to play with. See also R.D. Astumian: Thermodynamics and Kinetics of a Brownian Motor, Science 276, p. 917-922 (1997). Essentially, it works like a very small, normal ratchet. Molecules in the atmosphere hit the system randomly. Sometimes it goes "forward," but it cannot go against the ratcheting mechanism - "backwards" is locked out. So you get a net forward motion on the ratchet essentially for free from the atmosphere.)
Connect the Brownian Ratchet to this little chain thingy. Have it wind something up. User presses button, and thingy unwinds. Basically a free recharging system.
Not all that practical, but pretty cool. I'm sure there are better applications... (anyone?)
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
> Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
.. ease is a matter of context, and security (akas: kernal/security mailing-list anality) is about as good as it gets. Can you point me towards a non-slackware-biased source that can break it down for me?
Since when did secure go hand in hand with ease?
We stick with FreeBSD
"Old man yells at systemd"
I'll be able to add a bike in a tightrope number to my flea circus.
For a neural network. I mean, such a mechanism seems to lend itself to a net. If it can indeed mimic these basic functions, they're sitting on a goldmine - maybe they'll even be able to reproduce simple biological functions... we'll see.
(Sorry. Couldn't resist).
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
The Ultra-micro-featherweight class of robot wars! (Or battlebots, or robotica, or whatever)
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
OK, that's amazing to see, but who else here thinks what we need is a MOVIE of it running. That would be SOO COOL.
This looks a whole lot like devices from the Planiverse...makes sense, since they are essentially dealing multiple two-dimensional layers. If you haven't read "The Planiverse", I suggest you do so...fascinating book.
Size of a human hair.
Can it prevent me to going bald?
Every tech should have a very practical use, you know...
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Is it just me, or should they work on rectifying the oval gear problem next?
will be necessary to keep it from gunking up.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
or going in circles shouting "Kernel Panic" or something.
Just an image. Tron with bicyles ;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Micro-Lego Mindstorms
My mom is an engineer at SNL, and I try to go once a year when they have their open house for families. The place is packed with stuff just as cool as this - supercomputers, particle colliders, nanotech, rockets and sattelites, I could go on and on. Really an amazing place - reading about it doesn't compare to seeing it in person. I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Damn. That is really neat. Good job sandia, keep it up.
God this stuff sometimes feels, well... unreal heh.
Neat.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
since way back I've always wanted to work on the latest and greatest. So I took a Mech Engineering degree, then they said computers were the greatest so, I just finished my CS degree and they said the hot thing was Biotech, so four years later I have my 'Bio-Informatics' degree then they said Nanotech so four more years and it's now Mechanical engineering.. hey
This reminds me of the last time I went to have dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Toronto. Their lounge has about six old ceiling fans, all driven by the same motor, connected by chains.
We all know what happened to that technology.
This might prove to be a good stepping-stone, but I think the end result will be a motor on everything that moves.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Now instead of one big honkin noisy fan, we can have the same noisy motor drive zillions of lil itty bitty fans (imagine if every little vent hole in your computer had a fan in it wheeeeee). Or maybe a huge wall full of these, would be safer to stick your finger into that then a big cut-your-finger-off fan.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Computer, knit me a jersey, bit two perl one :-)
How do you oil the chain?
If the chain breaks do you bend a valve?
Ever since computers were run by human beings, who tend to make mistakes when technology becomes unecessarily complicated.
FreeBSD does indeed have a good reputation for security, but not for the reasons you suggest. Also, the slackware user you responded to probably thinks slack is easier because he's been using it for so long, rather than because of any particularly well-made interface (slackware is very minimalist.)
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
Just look at those gears. Man, with technology like that we can finally reduce Babbage's Analytical Engine to something that'll fit on a chip.
Now that's a microcomputer!
-- Alastair
Why does a Brownian Ratchet sound like a re-invention of Maxwell's Daemon? E.g. a cute thought experiment, but impossible to implement in the real world? Last time I checked, the laws of thermodynamics still implied there was no such thing as a free lunch...
The Brownian Ratchet you describe won't work, because of the second law of thermodynamics. The second law is potent enough that even evoking Feynman's name won't make it go away. Besides, what Feynman described was why this won't work.
See Chapter 46 of the Lectures if you want the details, but in short, it would quickly get hot enough that its own shaking (heat=random motion remember?) would drown out the Brownian motion.
-- MarkusQ
this better not be like the chain on my big ball factory. *turn* *turn* *snap*....damn. maybe i should take the 10000rpm electric drill off and use the dinky motor it comes with.
Does the Pentium 4 use these, or something else?
Tom
I have discovered a wonderful
LOL, had to say that... :-D
This is going to use one tiny chainbreaker :P
"You win again Gravity!" -Futurama (Zapp)
Looks like you used to ride the bus to school
"You win again Gravity!" -Futurama (Zapp)
I clicked on their "Download 300 dpi image" link, and it gave me a 533 pixel wide picture of the "microchain" drive. That means that gear must be over an inch and a half wide!
It's not surprising that they make that analogy, the media contact guy is called Neal Singer...
Anyone remember that "lock" they built out of silicon 2 year ago that didn't get used in anything?
I mean, come on... who supervises these guy?
Sounds like the need to pratical guidance or some good old fashion exposure the commercial world.
If they want to keep their funding, maybe they should think twice about announcing *anything*.
These little gadgets are so small that it is possible to make them out of a single, faultless piece of material. Okay, if you had a dislocation or an inclusion in your bike chain, then it would fail pretty quickly, if it worked at all; but if you get a good one, then it will seem almost immortal when compared to macroscopic objects. So, you make a few spares, and throw away the duds.
We are used to seeing silicon and silicon dioxide as crystalline. However, if you take out the small features that allow a crack to propagate through a crystal, then these materials can seem very tough and flexible. Think of glass fibres and glass. The Sandia site used to have a downloadable video of a minature moving mirror getting trodden on by a flea: it bends but does not crumple, and springs back unharmed.
There are other changes as you get to submicron sizes. Surface tension and other chemical effects seem huge. Water drops seem to have a tough skin on them at this scale, and drops will sit on a surface rather than wet it. This is just as well: a water drop could glue the chain together if it could wet. As things are, these gadgets seem to survive in the open atmosphere just fine.
If you think that is weird, the nanoscale stuff is much weirder. Interesting times, or what?
Soon we will be building micro steamengines. ;)
That will take us risht into the micro industrial revolution which in turn will lead to the micro computer
Privacy is terrorism.
Does this mean we can now expect to see a Babbage Engine in the same form factor as a pocket calculator?
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
The original Pentium had a bug due to mismatched gear ratios, IIRC.
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
Ah, don't waste Offtopic mod point. Mod the reply to parent up!
Wouldn't this enable us to make chips with a random number generator that's _truly_ random? No more fussing about with all that pseudorandomness :)
Do these things wear out? I'm guessing that oil would not have the desired effect.
--tif
you can see the nano-hamster running in the wheel to turn this contraption.
Don't you guys really mean elliptical? I know, I know, it's not the way to make friends. Here's a thought, though: two elliptical gears can be meshed to act like a pair of round gears, as long as the major axis of each gear is perpendicular to the other's. The only downsides I can see (aside from being needlessly complex) is that there is probably added friction, and the gears would need extra space around them to avoid collisions with other objects. Might there be a use for such a thing on this small a scale?
The Brownian Ratchet you describe won't work, because of the second law of thermodynamics.
... something we do with batteries all the time.
Not really. Energy is taken from the motion of the atmosphere. It is free in economic, not physical, terms, and is therefor not a violation of the 2nd law.
In other words, it is not a closed system he is describing, but an open system where energy is introduced (from the molecular motion of the atmosphere, which in turn is powered by the sun).
Furthermore, heating issues can be handled in the way they are handled in any electrical or mechanical system (in this case decoupling the ratchet, using active cooling, or whatever). Besides, chances are something like this is being used to charge a more mundane battery (converting mechanical energy to electical, which involves loss of energy, then converting the stored energy back to electricity, which involves another loss, and so on).
All well within the laws of thermodynamics. Innovative, and "free" in the sense that atmospheric motion, powered by the cost-free energy of the sun, is free. Not at all free in terms of thermodynamics or entropy, as energy is being introduced from outside and then simply stored in some fashion, at a net loss in terms of total energy
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This is funded by the RIAA.
When an unauthorized MP3 is detected, a
mini chainsaw saws your chip in half.
... it is powered by the sun. So fuck the damn creationists, doomsday get my gun" (to borrow a phrase from MC Hawking).
There is nothing mystical about the physical infrastructure of human intelligence. We derive our energy from the food we eat (in a very ineffecient manner), much of which in turn (at some point) derives its energy from photosynthesis, which in turn derives its energy from the sun, an energy source external to the earth (and one which will, some day, run out).
We are powered by the sun, in other words, not some mystical force violating Thermodynamic's second law. Our intelligence may have other implications, but a mystical violation of the basic laws of physics isn't one of them.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You can see the Campagnolo Micro-Record markings.
Each bearing hand polished by buxom Italian babes.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
... is what you hear when a joke goes completely over your head.
What about geothermal and nuclear? Geothermal is basically potential energy from the initial formation of the solar system and nuclear comes from the destruction of other stars and/or the raw energy of hydrogren.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
I think there was a SCI FI book called the Difference engine, where "Clackers" used steam powered mechanical computers to run programs on punch cards. Now all we need is a really tiny keypunch machine. I can see it now... PKPA Personal Key Punch Assistant. Does this also mean CPU will mean Card Punch Unit?
Ross Youngblood
"Device drivers?" I hope their not for .VXD's or anything evil like that. With bicycles, those little MS drivers could escape my Windows partition three times as fast.
I once shot a man in Reno 'cause they cancelled Firefly.
Coming next: Nano-smokestacks and nano-steel furnaces.