Handheld Supercomputers in 10-15 Years?

An anonymous reader writes "Supercomputers small enough to fit into the palm of your hand are only 10 or 15 years away, according to Professor Michael Zaiser, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering and Electronics. Zaiser has been researching how tiny nanowires — 1000 times thinner than a human hair — behave when manipulated. Apparently such minuscule wires behave differently under pressure, so it has up until now been impossible to arrange them in tiny microprocessors in a production environment. Zaiser says he's figured out how to make them behave uniformly. These "tamed" nanowires could go inside microprocessors that could, in turn, go inside PCs, laptops, mobile phones or even supercomputers. And the smaller the wires, the smaller the chip can be. "If things continue to go the way they have been in the past few decades, then it's 10 years... The human brain is very good at working on microprocessor problems, so I think we are close — 10 years, maybe 15," Zaiser said."

Comments

Re:The Not Too Far Future

[infolib]

I had a lecturer who explained that when applying for grants you'd always like the research to have imminent application. On the other hand, if you put the deadline too early you, or the people who granted the money, might have to face responsibility for the failure. In between was there was a sweet spot, which he gauged to be around 15 years or so. Ever since then I've honored him by referring to this phenomenon as the "Flensberg Optimum".