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Cascading Molecules Drive IBM's Smallest Computer
Benoit Fries writes "EE Times reports that IBM researchers have created a simple computation engine that's more than 250,000 times smaller than the most advanced silicon circuitry. Called the world's smallest computer, the system relies on a 'molecular cascade' that pushes a handful of carbon monoxide molecules across a copper surface to perform digital logic functions. 'Even if CMOS density follows Moore's Law for 40 more years, molecular cascades are still going to be smaller,' they said."
I think IBM is going off the wrong direction in tackling Moore's Law.
We should be attempting massive parallelism instead of packing more logic per area.
Isn't that how our brain works?
'Even if CMOS density follows Moore's Law for 40 more years, molecular cascades are still going to be smaller'
Pfft - if I had a nickel for every time I heard that...
Counter Strike for mice.
Carbon monoxide? Carcinogenic hard drives! I was worried about my computer being too safe.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
So if the power goes out, half the city asphixiates, right? :-)
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*LoC == Standard metric unit of information (Library of Congress). Size of unit varies from year to year.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Niiice. This means we don't have to learn new calculus to program assembly and STILL experience the computing power of single atoms. Good. My head hurts when thinking about sets AND super-sets at the same time (read, quantum computing)
I am the Barber of Seville.
'Even if CMOS density follows Moore's Law for 40 more years, molecular cascades are still going to be smaller,'
Chances are it'll be more than 40 years until they could make an actual product with this technology so I don't think that I'm going to hold off on getting that new conventional cpu quite yet
People seem much brighter once you light them on fire.
"The slow operation of the gates -- some required seconds to settle -- underscores the fact that the work was part of a research project."
You pretty much have your choice of one chip that does something 250,000 times in a second, or 250,000 chips that do one thing each a second... Until they can speed these things up, they're more of a curiosity than a useful technology.
Nooo!!! You're stepping on them!!!
It's not the size that counts, it's how you use it!
That was so unexpected.....yeah, right.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
All those people worrying about asphyxiating on carbon monoxide...
CO binds very tightly to metallic ligands such as copper. The Carbon atom has an unbound lone pair of electrons, that are donated to the metal's d-electron shell. Additionally the CO molecule creates a pi-back-bonding system with the metal center, making the complex even more stable.
Upshot: the CO is not going to spontaneously leak off the chip into your atmosphere. In any case, I doubt that such logic circuits would contain sufficient carbon monoxide to pose a health threat.
(Interesting side note: CO asphyxiates you by binding very tightly to the iron in hemoglobin in your blood, much more tightly than oxygen can. IIRC, however, CO will preferentially bind to copper over Fe.)
My other sig is also a
Aw, I was almost getting excited as I read the article. This technology appears to be a long way from being a post-silicon circuit alternative for CPUs.
:)
It's "exceedingly slow," according to the article. Still, maybe some kind of niche exists for it to be useful. Then again, maybe they'll implement the NOT gate and get this puppy running near the frequency of 500nm light or something.
I'd be excited by that.
250,000 times smaller than the most advanced silicon circuitry. Of course, it's also 250,000,000 times slower. I'm guessing there won't be molecular cascade chips in my PC anytime soon, unless I have a lot of free time...
Because it is not radioactive.
LOS ANGELES 6:39PM PST - The American Assocation of Midgets issued a press release stating "finally a computer company is aligned with our cause. We, the worlds smallest people have been waiting for decades for the worlds smallest computer."
The first person who makes a Star Trek joke about Cascading Failure gets shot.
That would be you, right?
Somebody correct me if I am getting this whole thing wrong, but AFAIK, when you go down to molecular levels, due to the uncertainty principle, sometimes the dominos will not fall as you predict, becauese either
1) they were already fallen you just didn't know, or
2) statistically speaking there is a much higher chance for "spontaneous reverse-thermodynamics" on a molecular level.
what i mean is that while macroscopically speaking, the universe is headed toward higher entropy, molecularly speaking, it's not necessarily so; The example commonly given is that you can drop and shatter an egg, or an shattered egg can come together, absorbing the sound waves etc and rise back into your hand. the latter will not (or, has completely ignorable probability of) happening, but as you and the egg gets smaller, the chance of this ignorable probability becomes less so.
hence, a molecular computer has the probability of operating "faultily" because of the laws of thermodynamics is not followed 100%. this is currently overcome by the thousands / millions of electrons we send over gates, probabilistically speaking they still behave on a macro level, but a molecular computer has no such luxury.
i mean, even there was only a minute chance that one molecule will go backwards as what we intended -- counting up the billions of calculations per second we expect from each chip, and the number of chips out there, and then the number of seconds / days / monthes / years they are expected to operate, the chance of error is almost inevitable. some serious redundancy / self-healing hardware / software might need to be invented.
i am just blabbing, though. like i said: i am no molecular physicist, so if there are some here, please comment.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Tiny computers were there first, and I believe they even have a patent for the worlds smallest computers. Pictures of the products on their web site are actual size.
What if we're all part of some gigantic computer and the molecules we put to work computing were already computing something ?
Is God going to sue us for stealing processing power ?
graspee
...it still wouldn't be large enough to connect a network cable.
... is that AMD chips run on smoke, and IBM chips run on Carbon Monoxide.
From the article:
The most complex circuit they built is so small that 190 billion could fit atop a standard pencil-top eraser 7mm in diameter.
In my days, when you wanted to show something was really small, you counted how many you could fit on the end of a pin, or in the width of a human hair. Comparing it with something that's almost 1 cm across is cheating.
RMN
~~~
My first thought was, the structure once toppled, IS toppled, and with a stationary background, it would not be possible to reset it. I found it is indeed true. In the IBM page, it states
...It takes several hours to set up the most complicated cascades. Since there is no reset mechanism, these molecule cascades can only perform a calculation once....
My idea is, have a non-stationary background of copper plane, which through some mechanism (which causes repulsion of the CO molecules) places the molecules in the reset position, ready to be "toppled" again!
"Do something man. Right now."
For Americans who are unfamiliar with international units such as an Azerbaijan, it slightly smaller than Maine.
The CIA website provides a convient and fairly comprehensive translation table between US units and international units.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You have to learn entirely different programming methods to program algorithms to run in parallel. Managing memory and cache access between multiple processors is a pain in the ass on the hardware side. That's what makes mobos for multiple processors more expensive. Plus, some tasks are just not well-suited to scaling across multiple processors at all.
In short, I'd rather have a one processor machine over a two or more processor machine if the one processor machine gives sufficient speed for a reasonable price.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
If a cascading molecule NOT gate is hard then thier cascading domino metaphor must not be accurate... It's easy to build a domino NOT gate. Here's how:
:
TtttttttttttttR
i
i
I
It's 2 runs in an L shape. Simultaneously gate a True signal at T and the input signal at I, read the result at R. Note: True = Falls, False = Stands.
Here's how it works
If I = True then the shorter I run knocks down the last t. When the longer T run reaches R, the last t will already have fallen so R will not fall. so we have:
I = True --> R = False
If I = False then the T run will knock down R. So we have:
I = False --> R = True
That's a NOT gate!
Combine that with a V shaped OR gate and you have a NOR gate. It's well known that any logic function can be constructed from NOR gates.
Jonathan Weesner
- Simultaneous Multiprocessing, a technology said to allow several hundred instructions to execute through the same physical wires and gates simultaneously. This allows Intel to reduce the transistor count from 948,089,112,552 transistors, as in the Pentium 6, to 14 transistors. (Plans for the next revision include dropping one of the remaining 14 transistors for cost effectiveness.)
- Temporal Result Ordering, which uses a built-in fluxcapacitor to efficiently move instructions and data backwards and forwards in time. This allows the processor to execute code during idle cycles and deliver the results to processes that have already finished executing, or will begin executing at some future time. This provides an incredible boost in speed and efficiency because:
- The processor can use the result of a computation before the computation itself is executed, and even before the program that contains the computation is loaded into memory.
- Computations whose results will be used at some future time can be performed early, before the user even decides to run the program.
- SpiritRun Technology, an extension of Temporal Result Ordering, which allows the processor to execute program code by its spirit, rather than its letter. As all programs contain bugs, or programmer errors which lead to undesired program behavior and crashes, this technology will save businesses over $80 billion dollars per year in lost data, staff time and resources. SpiritRun uses Temporal Result Ordering to detect crashes before they occur (again, during idle cycles taking place in the past, present or future) and analyses the program in its entirety to determine the cause of the undesired operation. At this time, the processor automatically corrects the program code to provide the desired operation. This technology also makes all code 100% secure because the processor detects crackers before they're even born and automatically modifies the holes that allowed them access in the first place.
- Built-in Photorealism Processing Unit, which generates photorealistic graphics by allocating a parallel universe which physically contains a perfect replica of the object being rendered and a photographer. The photographer takes a perfect photograph of the subject and it is digitally transmitted via the Interverse to the processor. Because the parallel universe has a timeline of its own, completely separated from our perception of time, this information appears to arrive immediately, even though the photography may take several hours in the parallel universe.
- Built-in Orchestra Sound Unit, which generates sounds for audio applications which rivals that of the greatest orchestras in the world. This works similarly to the Photorealism Processing Unit, except that a parallel universe is created which contains an orchestra. The sound is recorded and transmitted, again, appearing to arrive immediately, even though the orchestra may have practiced the piece for years in the parallel universe.
As you can clearly see, AMD has a lot of catching up to do.Kind of like when Alexander Fleming wrote up a journal paper back in 1928(?) about how mould killed bacteria, and Walter Florey found it in a literature search a decade later and set his research team to isolate the responsible compound and figure out how to produce it in bulk.
I've had this experience myself. I needed to find an efficient algorithm for a relatively obscure problem. The usual textbooks didn't help, but I finally located a survey paper which finally revealed a 1981 journal article which described exactly the algorithm I was looking for.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It's an interesting project, but that's a long way to go....
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis