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Nanocomputing Proof Point 59

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-logic-gates dept.
untulis writes "HP Labs and UCLA researchers have apparently been able to produce logic gates via chemical processes rarher than standard lithography, making gates only a few atoms in size, according to Saturday's San Jose Mercury News. The article describes the gates as being a thousand times smaller than current gates. Mass production is at least a decade away, if the process turns out to be commerically feasible. "
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Nanocomputing Proof Point

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  • "We experimented with laser scanning & optical techniques, traditional silicon metal layers, and other even more bizarre means -- in the end, we had to use silicon interconnect, which meant that the wires which connected to these devices were thousands of times larger than the devices itself."

    Interesting that you mention that problem. I just received my August issue of Popular Science and they had an article about DNA conductors. A research team at University of Basel's Institute of Physics in Switzerland were able to ground one end of DNA and attach the other end to an electric contact. What they found is that the DNA can act similar to copper and conduct electricity. Not only that, they feel that there would be less scattering and slowing down of electrons with DNA "wire" than with traditional means.

    And yes.. They hope that someday the DNA wire will be used in nanodevices for the connections.
  • Now that's scary. Having to run an SMP machine to be able to use Micro$oft's latest OS. I can see the minimum hardware requirements on the side of the box now. Four Pentium Pro 5 processors, 1 Gigabyte of shared RAM, and 2 Gigabytes of free hard disk space. (For optional voice interface add another Gigabyte of both memory and hard disk space.)

  • Re:Blah.. lets see some details (Score:3)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Monday July 12, 1999 @02:43AM (#1807887)
    Coming from academia myself, while it's not
    competition-driven, you do NOT want to fully
    publish your results until you have complete
    proof-of-concept; especially in lucritive areas
    like this, there are dozens of other labs (US
    and int'l) watching for advances like this,
    and they might be able to beat you to the
    punch if you leak too many details. In this
    case, this could cost the group a patent, a
    grant, or other rewards for coming up with the
    first proof-of-concept.


    That's why articles like this, or the one about
    teleportation being possible from about 6 months ago, or many other of the science articles being
    posted to /., are sketchy in details, as the
    group is strongly protecting their potental
    assets.

  • Generic comment for generic breakthrough (Score:3)

    by wocky ( 17453 ) on Monday July 12, 1999 @03:01AM (#1807889) Homepage
    This is so kewl! I can't wait to get one of these babies so that I run Quake at 10000 FPS. And an overclocked dual processor system would be even more AWS0M!!!!!! True there aren't many details in the article, but I'm sure their irreluvant anyway. An if all those clewless researchers working on pushing silicon faster or on the hundreds of alternative new technologies wood just work on this one, we'd get it in only a few years!!!

    With such raducl performance, all those complicated MP (massively polynomal) complete problems will be trivial! Imagine finding factors of a Hamiltonian circuit in just seconds!!! Course one of my teachers mumbled something about hyuge speed increases not really helping on MP problems, but that's obviously B0GUZ!!

    The bad thing will be that this might keep Microsux with their bloatware in business, but that's OK cuz Linux will rock even more on this puppy. Forget those GNOME vs KDE flamewars; we'll have enough juice to run both at once!
  • That may be true for UCLA (though I'd like to see the papers), but many universities participate in non-disclosable research (military, corporate, etc), in return for money/goods and the chance to attain data that they may not have been able to generate themselves.

    I wasn't saying that there was anything wrong with his behaviour, or that it is wrong for him to engage in research on behalf of an outside firm. The man is one of the most brilliant profs we have, and I'm glad he's stayed with the university rather than going out to make the millions I'm very sure he could.

    Besides, my first guess is that the people at UCLA are simply completing their research so as not to make any premature announcements (ie. Cold fusion, etc.) Don't get your knickers in a knot. ;)
  • Hey, I'm not saying it can't be done! Your analogy between my post and a 1921 newspaper article neglects the fact that I'm an interested party and am willing to help. The Flapper-era naysayer simply took a pot-shot and denounced the entire idea. I honestly believe this can work, given the right additional technological advances.

    Both of the other replies to this were quite insightful, and much appreciated. I have been out of the loop since 1995, after all. :) I'm glad to see people focusing on the interconnect issue, and wish that this news article perhaps took a bit closer of a look at the real technological challenges rather than those which have been solved in many creative ways prior to this research's publication.

  • Friend of mine at UofT is working on that project. He's doing the grunt work; laying out DNA strands between conductors and running a current. Not having much luck so far, but here's hoping... :)
  • So what if it IS akin to building a computer with vacuum tubes? Did we not have to go through that stage with electronic computers? The technology will grow in stages, with new developments building upon older ones.

    Perhaps we should have waited for the Pentium chip before building any PCs. ;-)

  • don't laugh.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If those organic molecules for logic gates can be built from common protein strand, the idea to genetically engineered E.Coli to make parralel computer is not far fetch.

    ...but will it run Linux?...*g*
  • The biggest problem with these Angstrom-sized computing elements is the interconnect. Back during my undergrad days at Yale [yale.edu], I worked with Prof. Mark Reed -- a man once named one of Fortune Magazine's 10 most promising scientists. Mark was researching novel quantum semiconductor devices, the sort where a memory bit was determined by a single quantum "dot" -- capable of either holding an electron within its well or being empty.

    We even worked on some transistors with I-V (that's current-voltage to you non EE types) curves which had two or three plateaus on them. Theoretically, this means that you could have a transistor which has three states instead of two (0, 1, and 2!)

    The biggest problems in making these chips commercially viable -- oh, and by the way, we had Motorola fabricate the devices to our specifications -- were that most of them only exhibited their nifty behavior at low temperature (liquid nitrogen temps, or, if you were extremely unlucky, liquid helium temps of ~4 Kelvin) and that if you wanted to make an array of these things, you had to find a way of accessing all of them. Now, according to scientists like Prof. Reed, the temperature problem may be tractable through the use of high-temperature superconductive materials, but as for interconnect...

    Traditional methods of accessing rows of transistors in memory cells don't work. You can't simply select a row and a column and expect the answer to trickle down to your buffers when the stored charge is a single electron. The same is probably true of a single molecule. We experimented with laser scanning & optical techniques, traditional silicon metal layers, and other even more bizarre means -- in the end, we had to use silicon interconnect, which meant that the wires which connected to these devices were thousands of times larger than the devices itself.

    I hate to be a party-pooper, but until some sort of discovery occurs in the interconnect field, it won't matter if we can represent a binary state with a single lepton!

  • I wouldn't get *too* excited about nanocomputing just yet.
    Most announcements like this never make it into reality. Even if it does, it's still a very long way ahead. We've got many more exciting developments coming along much sooner, like cheap
    SMP (the next big thing, IMHO). Even if we do get cheap, fast nanocomputers, Windows 2010 (or whatever) will still take just as long to reboot.

    Who else thought of Dr. Evil's 'Mini-Me' when reading, "gates as being a thousand times smaller than current gates"?
  • Once the ball gets rolling on something like this, it tends to pick up speed beyond all expectations. Though I had projected 2015 before we started to see commonplace nano-apps...

    Anyway, I expect we'll see real progress on this within 5 to 7 years. Might still be 2010 or 2015 before we start seeing consumers REALLY get into them. Anyone care to establish a betting pool for when we'll see the first diamond frame automobile?
  • I wouldn't get too excited about nanocomputing just yet.
    Most announcements like this never make it into reality. Even if it does, it's still a very long way ahead. We've got many more exciting developments coming along much sooner, like cheap SMP (the next big thing, IMHO). Even if we do get cheap, fast nanocomputers, Windows 2010 (or whatever) will still take just as long to reboot.

    Who else thought of Dr. Evil's 'Mini-Me' when reading, "gates as being a thousand times smaller than current gates"?
  • I don't know much about the inner workings of cpus, but anytime I someone suggests of a way to make Gates 1000 time smaller, it puts a smile on my head:)
  • The IEEE-CS of Cal Poly SLO was luck enough to hear Dr. Stan Williams of HP (one of the pioneers of "growing wires") give a talk on this very subject two years ago (if you get a chance to hear this man speak, do so). His description in post-worthy terms boils down to single electron gate operations where the electron is split in a wave form theory and either moves through the wire *switch on* or bounces back *switch off*. He continued to hint that they were producing raw waffers of these devices and etching them in a manner that can be described as "infecting them" with a virus and seeing what comes out on the other side because the devices on the waffers are simply too small to map. This waffer is functionally similar to a neural network, you don't quite know what's all there but you know how to use the cause and effect productivly.
    Word has it as of this now two year old talk, that HP has already produced several functional 8 bit quantum processors that are capable of solving all results of a simple logic patern simulaneously.
    By my own limited estimation, I'd have to belive that HP has a process in place to produce these waffers in high yeild but not at low cost yet.
    Time tables on HPs commercial production are estimated between the year 2007 and 2012. Kiss your encryption schemes good bye
    -panZ
  • I call him mini-Bill.

    He'd still be a biter! Ha!

    "Die Scott (McNeally)!" Haha!

    - Ahem. Sorry. Shag flashback.
  • Most of the time they (ChEngs) play with latex, lubricants, various products of fermentation and some compounds that can literally blow your mind.

    Same as all other college students. :)

    Nice major, but I wouldn't want to live there.
  • It's not just UCLA, HP labs is involved as well. They are possibly running with HP funding and therefore under HP Non-Disclosure. I do research at UofT, and while Canadian Universities are less dependent upon corporate grants than American Universities (That's changing, unfortunatly), there is still a strong relationship between any lab and it's corporate sponsor.

    In fact, during a VLSI course this year, a professor at UofT was speaking about transistor sizes in chips and was giving us rough sizes like "Poly lines can be, oh around .2 microns wide, and the N-doped wells about, oh .4 microns wide, etc." So someone in the class, frustrated with these vague numbers asked for the exact numbers. And the guy gives her this pained look and says, "Uh, well, I'm actually doing some development right now with a die fab (chip manufacturing firm) and I can't release the numbers, I can't even tell you what firm I'm working for."

    Pretty spooky for an "open academic institution" eh?

    Also, it is just possible that they're not sure of their numbers yet. The scientific community is merciless with those who release numbers that aren't rock solid. They're probably just covering their asses. I would. ;)

  • We don't know anything about the tech. There's no reason for the gates to run hot. A superconducting pentium II would run at just above room temperature, if it existed :). So before we know any more about the substances and their characteristics, we can't say anything about them.
  • If you can create two photons with opposite polarization, as soon as you measure the polarization of one, the state of the other is immediately fixed, regardless of the distance.

    Arggh!

    Repeat after me: You can't send information this way. You can't send information this way. You can't send information this way.

    Imagine the following scenario:

    • You have a bag containing a black marble and a white marble.
    • Two people pick marbles with their eyes closed and then,
    • Without looking walk a far distance away and then look at their marble
    Instantly, they'll know what color marble they have and the other person has. So what. Not one single bit of information has been transmitted from one person to the other; all that's happened is that equivalent bits of information have been sent from the bag to each person. And since it was a random bit of information to begin with, you're no better off than before.
  • "...you could have a transistor which has three states instead of two (0, 1, and 2!)"

    yeah, sure. that would work REAL well with the logic computers are based on. programmers would have to deal with booleans with values like true (1), false (0), and whatever (2). Think of how the numbering systems of computers would change... there could be 6561 (3^8) in 8 bits instead of 256 (2^8). hey... then we wouldn't need two whole bytes for all those chineese characters! It would take a while to change the 1,000,000,000 decibytes (or however much it is) of data there is stored on computers from binary to trinary, and processors would have a hard time with the logical operaters (and, or, xor, not, etc.) What's 2102012^12012001 in base 3? computers would have to convert from trinary, to binary, then to trinary (to be transferred) and then finally to decimal, instead of binary to decimal.
  • Why is it like that? Chips are created NOW with a chemical process. It's just a different one. What do you think lithography is?

    If you're referring to us retracing our steps to branch into a new field, well, yes. Every application of a technology has its functional limits. And I hope we're well on our way to developing a new computer tech before we reach the limits of the old one.

  • If that's all there was it wouldn't be very interesting.

    However, some research summaries I've read (sorry that I can't give references) imply that there is a way to see (measure) a photon in the polarization of your choice.

    To extend your analogy, this would be where person 1 chooses to see his marble as white, which would then force person 2's marble to be black. So person 1 has just transmitted a bit of information to person 2 instantaniously.

    AFAIK, no one's proven that this can actually happen, so it may be in the same category as travelling back in time. It's just some interesting speculation.

  • Nanotech is the cybernetic transformation of molecular manufacturing.

    What does this mean?

    simply "grow" things from the bottem up.
    like a plant can grow out of a seed, by dissembliing and assembling molecules.

    The natural universal assembler is called a ribosome. It builds all proteïnes in a biological substance given information of DNA.


    So what I mean is: do trees get hot?



    PS: The Future=Software
  • The applications of this in miniturization of microchip technnology should be pretty interesting. Imagine thumbnail size motherboard

    Oh. First post?

  • I think we probably need to hear more.

    Having proved that the concept might work...

    Heh.

  • Wow (Score:1)

    by journey- ( 37127 )
    thats about all i can say, WOW
    I don't know a whole lot about computers, so umm,
    what exactly do the gates do? is it the little
    'yes' or 'no' switch type thing for each bit of
    memory?
  • More smoke in the water.. do journalists just hang around universities waiting for people to make "breakthrough's" so they can go and not publish the results. How much stuff like this gets published into scientific journals, with way more detail than this, and never makes it onto places like slashdot? Surely people working at UCLA should be a little more open about their research than, say, Xerox/PARC. That assumption appears to be false.. or is the popular media just jumping the gun a little.

    Oh and BTW.. if it aint molecular manufacturing (that's little nanobes that can self-replicate and make a wide range of ridged structures.. see nano.xerox.com/nano/) then it aint a breakthrough in nanotechnology.. mildstone, maybe.

  • OK, but what about speed? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They don't say anything about the speed at which these can be manufactured. That's been the biggest problem with many of the non-lithographic approaches mentioned so far--it simply takes too long for most processes to produce a full chip with a reasonable amount of equipment. Anyone know any more about this technique?
  • Now all they have to do is train some of those otherwise worthless E-Coli strains to exhude these gates from their butts.
    Then, what the hey, send some of these E-Coli to oh, Jupiter and let them turn the whole planet into a single CPU. Now that would be the shits.

  • DNA!?!?! (Score:1)

    by noy ( 12372 )
    Look closely - they are possibly using DNA to bind the chemicals in the right places... another great use for what nature has given us... and great potential for a few things, like fingerprinting each chip, allwing for built in neural circuits, and easy integration into one of us...

    wow, i say...
  • Where I go to school ( Rochester Inst. of Tech ), there's a whole program devoted to chip/circuit fabrication: micro-electronic engineering. The first 2-3 years(of 5) are vitually all calc, physics and chemistry. We ( comp. eng ) get to share the same, nice, cool, air conditioned building with them :) Now I just can't wait to get back to finish my degree.

  • Details? (Score:1)

    by wct ( 45593 )
    The lack of details is a bit disappointing - I think this achievement is more a proof of concept of manufacture, than a validation of nanotechnology as a whole. Also, building a nanocomputer with a chemical process seems akin to building a computer with vacuum tubes...
  • So you grow the processors, build the memory is steel, mix it all up and you have a brain. With deterioration, incoherent thought, and possible some pretty fierce AI. 10 years, eh? hmmmm....



  • Well look at it this way,

    Proof of concept is the way that things get funded, and any funding going towards serious nanotech related research is good in my book.

    Of course for a more complete workup on whats going down in nanotechnology visit http://foresight.org

    (and did you really think they were going to give out all the details? w/ Zod only knows how much money riding on it? :)

    ~grell
    your mission should you choose to accept it is
    to flail about pointlessly on the ground.

  • A logic gate is the smallest component that makes up the processor and the other logic in your computer.
    A simple example is the AND gate with two inputs and one output. If both inputs are 1 the output will be 1, else it will be 0. The OR gate with two inputs works so that if one or both of the inputs is 1, then the output is 1, but if both inputs are 0, the output is 0.

    In order to build i.e. a processor you combine many of these gates and a few other components.

  • I read an article a few years ago about a "computer" built from molecules of chloroform. I think that it was tested by searching through a snapshot of the web to find a particular word. Bookmarks come and go, but I found a few articles on the subject:
    A Vision of Synthetic Prophecy [ciis.edu]
    Quantum Computing with Molecules [mit.edu]
    The computing aspect of this is really cool, as it would make factoring Really Large Numbers a snap (because these computers would be massively parallel and would be execute many instructions in one step). These machines would have the ability to factor a 400 digit number in about a year. The networking applications of quantum computing are pretty interesting as well. If you can create two photons with opposite polarization, as soon as you measure the polarization of one, the state of the other is immediately fixed, regardless of the distance.
  • I go to school with an engineering scientist who did his thesis on quantum computing. What these people are looking at doing, is producing a new method of doing the same old thing, building ever smaller and smaller transistors to cobble together into a CPU.

    Quantum computing chucks the transistor out the window and works directly with molecules and electrons and probability and stuff. I'm just a computer engineer, I understand transistors and circuits and things with stuff and the resistance. All this new fangled probability computing scares me ;)

    Actually, it's really cool, nano tech will make it much more practical to produce quantum computers, so we can abandon the transistor model, and get on with some serious parallel computing!

  • HP Labs and UCLA researchers have apparently been able to produce logic Gates via chemical processes rather than standard lithography, making Gates only a few atoms in size, according to Saturday's San Jose Mercury News. The article describes the Gates as being a thousand times smaller than current Gates. Mass production is at least a decade away, if the process turns out to be commerically feasible.

    To sum it up: If this works out well, Linux will soon be overrun by lots of little Bills, giving Microsoft a totally new meaning... ;-)

    Sorry - couldn't resist! :-)
  • The "writer" of the article hinted that without advances such as these, chip makers would be able to extend Moore's law "only for another 10 to 15 years at most."

    Not that I am in any way looking forward to technological stagnation, but wouldn't it be interesting if we did hit a brick wall for a few years. All those surplus design elements (dancing paperclip, configuration wizrds, the gui itself) would suddenly be seen as the drain they actually are.

    Software doesn't run fast enough? Upgrade to the latest model. But what if the latest model chip was just as fast as the one you have now?

    I know, I know, more RAM, multiple processors, Beowulf clusters, but it would still be interesting to see the effects of a problem like that.

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