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HP's Crossbar Latch... Next-Gen Transistor?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the getting-smaller-getting-faster dept.

moojin writes "CNN.com reports that "in a paper published in Tuesday's Journal of Applied Physics, HP said three members of its Quantum Science Research group propose and demonstrate a "crossbar latch," which provides the signal restoration and inversion required for general computing without the need for transistors.""

5 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. Be sure to also read.. by Karamchand · · Score: 5, Informative

    ..the Original statement by HP and even more important HP's paper in the Journal of Applied Physics.

  2. Since it's a technical story... by GillBates0 · · Score: 5, Informative
    and since money.cnn.com is a business publication:

    EETimes story

    It's Patent #6586965

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  3. The problem is leakage. by Dylan+Thomas · · Score: 5, Informative
    Making processors faster and more complex generally means getting smaller. After all, an electron can only move so fast... if you want to get it from one point to another even faster, you've got to bring those two points closer together. The challenge is that if wires start getting too close together, you get leakage--electrons jumping from one channel to another--and leaky processors don't process so well.

    As near as I can tell, what they've done here is implement levels of titanium and platinum nano-wires which pass each at right angle. However, to prevent leakage, at the crossover points they are held apart by Rotaxan molecules.

    Rotaxan molecules are organic, and have this nifty little molecular ring which enables them to be conductive or not based on its position. Thus, you get your binary switch. This little animal is the "crossbar latch," apparently. And it can be done in something like 40 nanometers, making it scads smaller than current conductive strips.

    Unfortunately, I'm having a great deal of trouble tracking down technical details. HP wants to keep its secrets, obviously, but Berkely and Stanford should be a little more forthcoming, think I. Anyone have links to more technical information? It would be greatly appreciated...

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  4. Re:Cool by amalcon · · Score: 4, Informative

    I agree with your point, but I just think in case people don't know, this isn't true quantum computing, per se. Though the technology does rely on quantum mechanics, and the science will quite possibly lead to quantum computing, all this is is a better transistor. Think transistor is to vacuum tube as nanoscale latch is to transistor. A true quantum computer is actually an entirely different type of computer than we see today, even moreso than a ternary or analog computer is different than a binary computer.

    Cal Tech has a <a href=http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~westside/quantum-i ntro.html>good article</a> on this:

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    -Amalcon
  5. As always, save the bad news for last by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 4, Informative
    The bad news is at the bottom of the article:
    • Mean operations til failure: ~100
    • Switching speed: ~100/sec
    So they just need to improve its reliability by a factor of 10^16 or so, the switching speed only by a factor of 10^7 or so.