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Nanotechnology To Replace Conventional CMOS
neutron_p writes "There is a lot of hype around nanotechnology these days, but some things are going to work in a near future anyway. IMEC announced a program aimed at seeking alternatives to the current CMOS manufacturing technologies using nanotechnologies. IMEC will investigate the use of semiconducting wires, carbon nanotubes and spintronics or electron spin." (IMEC describes itself as "Europe's leading independent research center" in the fields of microelectronics and nanotechnology.)
Faster, cooler chips about a decade from now when the whole chip paradigm has shifted. Nanotech will still have an application, but not as a replacement for current methods. Instead nanotech will be integrated into new manufacturing technology from the ground up.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
All the site says is that they are investigating this.
IMEC program participants will investigate the use of semiconducting wires, carbon nanotubes and spintronics and, at the same time, develop the metrology and theoretical approach required as a backbone for implementation of the new methodologies.
I know several other places that have been doing this for a while now. How is this any news at all?
Big IC manufacturers hate adopting radically new and risky technologies before they are forced to. I wouldn't expect CMOS to be phased out for a good while. Remember CMOS logic was designed in the early 60s, but most IC manufacturers continued to use PMOS and NMOS chips until the late 80s and early 90s when the size and number of MOSFETs going into ICs caused far too much power dissipation using NMOS/PMOS...
Too bad that simple physics prevent this from becoming a reality (the resistance of air at nano-level is too large, for example)
In many cases that is not a problem. E.g. you make metal gathering proteins to be released in a liquid, or proteins able to detect and contain specific other proteins in a blood stream, and I could go on and on.
Nanotechnology doesn't just mean to be able to manufacture chips on smaller scales. Another very much more important aspect is what we could do with specificly "manufactured" proteins in medicine. And this is not a such far dream, there are people working on this, even some which I know, let alone those whom I don't.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
It's called "biology".
There are several different ways of getting to a functional nano assembler, and one of the current favorites is taking parts of functioning devices (virii and bacteria) and reassemble them into desired configurations.
The only difference between a "nano" device and a virus is who designed it, Dr. Putz or Mother Nature, (Mom built hers using trial and error, lots of "bugs").
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
Semiconductors were discovered in 1874, and it wasn't until 1948 that the transistor was discovered, it took a few more decades to really commercialize it. On the whole, roughly 100 years from the discovery of semiconductors to widespread commercial use.
We first developed a device (STM) to image and move individual atoms in 1987. It would not surprise me in the least if it took 100 years for us to come up with something which would be widely commercially available based on atomic scale manufacturing. Have some patience.
I agree that the term "nano" gets thrown around a lot more than it should be, but how do you know one of these nano-gadgets won't be leading the field in the future? I realize that fact that new people and ideas have entered the field pisses some people off, but if an organic chemist wants to call his work on artificial muscle polymers "nanotechnology" I can't find a reason to argue with him.
On the other hand, critisizing the Millipede project for not being "cool enough" is like complaining that the Manhattan project failed to develop the H-bomb. It's a major accomplishment which puts us one step closer in that direction to industrial molecular assembly. Read that article you linked to again, and perhaps a review of Atomic Force Microscopy or Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy. The Millipede project IS nanotechnolgy, and it IS going toward that dream of nano-level assembly.
Cool! Now we can have crappy cameras that are even smaller!
Not too long ago, nanotechnology was about wonderful fantasies of small machines at nano-level assembling molecules or even medicines. Too bad that simple physics prevent this from becoming a reality (the resistance of air at nano-level is too large, for example).
Wow, it's good to know that we don't need to worry about bacteria and viruses any more, since the laws of physics preclude their existence.