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How Small Can Computers Get? Computing in a Molecule
ScienceDaily on what the future might bring for atomic-scale computing: "Joachim, the head of the CEMES Nanoscience and Picotechnology Group (GNS), is currently coordinating a team of researchers from 15 academic and industrial research institutes in Europe whose groundbreaking work on developing a molecular replacement for transistors has brought the vision of atomic-scale computing a step closer to reality. Their efforts, a continuation of work that began in the 1990s, are today being funded by the European Union in the Pico-Inside project. ... The team has managed to design a simple logic gate with 30 atoms that perform the same task as 14 transistors, while also exploring the architecture, technology, and chemistry needed to achieve computing inside a single molecule and to interconnect molecules."
Smaller transistors means more efficient transistors. It's not just about size.
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Combine this kind of idea with recent research on PNA (a more robust molecule than DNA which shares many of the properties) and the long term prospects could be very interesting - self-assembling memory, for instance.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
OK but what if you want to put them inside nanobots designed to target and kill cancer cells or a zillion other applications that are made possible by smaller and less power hungry computation? Smaller also means more powerful computers at the 'classic' scale, for which we know there is demand for right now by way of the very existence of supercomputers.
Not only that, but it also means you can have millions of (parallel) processors on a tiny chip, which results into more performance.