Slashdot Log In
IBM Creates 1st Single Molecule Computer Circuit
Posted by
Hemos
on Sun Aug 26, 2001 04:53 PM
from the making-it-work dept.
from the making-it-work dept.
Llowfyr writes "Yahoo has reports that IBM researchers have created the first ever single molecule computer circuits which may someday lead to a new class of smaller and faster computers that consume less power than today's machines. The IBM team made a `` voltage inverter '' -- one of the three fundamental logic circuits that are the basis for all of today's computers -- from a carbon nanotube, a tube-shaped molecule of carbon atoms that is 100,000 times thinner than a human hair. IBM scientists will present the achievement today at the 222nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society being held in Chicago and it appears in the web edition of the ACS' journal Nano Letters."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
IBM Creates 1st Single Molecule Computer Circuit
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 148 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
A crystal is a single molecule. (Score:1, Troll)
A crystal is a single molecule. A transistor is a single molecular structure. It won't work any other way.
--Blair
That's Really Cool and All (Score:2, Funny)
I like to see research of this type, but there needs to be more research with short-term effect.
Some weird title (Score:2, Funny)
Erm, what was the question again?
i wonder (Score:1)
Well... this surely looks like another great step towards high performance computing!
You'd need to use scanning electron microscope... (Score:3, Funny)
Gain? (Score:1)
Ok, lots of smart people on /. someone explain this please. Because the article sure doesn't!
Re:Gain? (Score:4, Informative)
A transistor is a three-terminal device. In a typical computer chip, these three terminals are called the source, the drain, and the gate. For a given voltage between the source and drain, the current that flows into the drain is strongly dependent on the voltage applied to the gate. That's what allows transistors to be used as switches: you can make a transistor that won't let current flow from source to drain unless the gate voltage is turned up past some value.
Achieving actual gain in a single-molecule device is important. Without gain greater than one, it's not possible to efficiently chain large numbers of transistors together to manipulate signals. A strong input would get degraded with each stage of transistor manipulation, eventually falling to a level too small to drive subsequent transistors.
There are *many* problems with the idea of using individual molecules to replace Si devices. Achieving a gain > 1 is a necessary but by no means sufficient step for eventual molecule-based computers. As a physicist, I think it's important to recognize real achievements in this field, but not to buy into the hype unquestioningly.
huh... (Score:3, Funny)
Dammit. Back in my day, we had real transistors, and silicon. We made chips out of SAND, dammit! None of this molecule pish posh. I ain't never gonna use some computer made from plants. You new-age scientists sure are ungrateful...
Why is this under ASK SLASHDOT?? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Very nice... (Score:2, Funny)
Also on news.com (Score:1)
(In case you may want to check)
There is an ominosity to this whole nano thing (Score:1)
Since IBM has successfully made a NOT gate out of a single molecule, they have made about 1/3 progress towards realizing a complete computer system made out of molecules. In fact, if they could make NAND gates out of these nanotubes, then they have everything they need to build a computing system since a NAND gate is functionally complete. Question is, does this mean that in the near future, the government will be able to implant invisible microchips in people for identification and tracking purposes, and what does this mean? Is this a bad thing looming in the future?
100,000 times thinner than a human hair (Score:2)
There is hope for us blonds yet.
The next step (Score:1, Informative)
I like this (Score:1)
The Hair (Score:2)
Just tell me big the damn thing is in regular units: meters, angstroms, astronomical units, whatever.
How original! (Score:1)
Jeez.. I hope whoever to persue this "smaller, faster, more efficient" idea a raise.. What a novel idea...
For those of us who would like a bit more info... (Score:5, Informative)
I was just thinking - they say their NOR gate is the size of approx. 1/100,000th the width of a human hair. Well, today's 1.4 GHz chips contain ~22 million transistors. That would make it 220 human hairs wide. That's a lot of power in a small space. I can't wait till the day I can crack RC5 on my cell phone.
The problem is: (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that with all this power, we still have lazy programmers that aren't writing cleaner, more efficient code, basically negating all the advances that have been made in processing technology. I mean, computers today are a million times faster than they were years ago, but do we see any major increase in speed?
You think it's hard adding components now...? (Score:1)
Now where did I put those molecular-tweezers???
Images to go with the article (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out the pictures and graphics [ibm.com] that IBM has made available.
And let us not dwell on the fact that I submitted a better version of this article early in the morning with more links than the one they decided to go with(sulking ends now).
Universal Gates (Score:1)
"Who is more foolish? The fool, or the fool that follows him?"
Obi-Wan Kenobi
In a related story... (Score:1)
A day for being pissed off, it seems. . . (Score:1)
The choreographed pace at which they're releasing this 'new' tech is such a stupid joke.
Read a few headlines down, (or up), where they're talking about successes in neuron/computer engineering techniques.
Oh, goody.
You do realize the League of Evil will require people to plug their brains in directly at some point? And the morons who suck up the Cyberpunk daydream where this is actually something desirable, (what? There are idiots like that present on Slashdot? Oh my!), are being used to buffer and in fact sell this horror to the world?
Yep. Sell it to the tech-heads, and you shape the world. The tech-heads have almost all the social muscle these days and not even they seem to fully realize it.
Why do you think it's so miserable to be alive if you live life as you have all been told? That is, working 8:00 to 6:00 jobs. Sucking up social programming which serves to render impotent relationships, one of the most powerful forces of stability and good energy; now perverted into over-sexed, short term, disappointing & miserable transactions. Thanks to James Cameron, the perfect boyfriend must now die of hypothermia in the North Atlantic, for crying out loud!
We've been programmed to eat unhealthy food with too many chemicals. Jeezus! Bread with everything. (There's almost no worse food combo out there!) Leading to poor health and further misery.
Enter the tech-heads.
Why do you think there have been so many episodes of Star Trek made with Holodeck fantasies? Do you think the Forces of Evil would allow such a virtuous show as Star Trek to exist if it wasn't the carrier for some toxin?
Grr.
Is nobody tuned into the same station as me? Am I the only one who can see this shit? Is nobody else scared out of their freeking minds? (Well, actually I'm not really all that scared; I'd describe my reaction as being something more akin to a fascination on an anthropological level. Watching exactly how the end of the world arrives is possibly the most amazing thing I'll ever see.)
Still, I can't believe that people are going to actually line up to be the first to plug their brains into the Matrix. Man! Now that is a sell job!
I mean, isn't face recognition in Borders Books already creepy enough? No! People want Microsoft and Echelon and **AMERICA** in their heads at night when they sleep! Digitize awareness! With everybody plugged into 'Friends' and 'Ally-McBeal,' nobody will even notice, much less rebel when the sky falls.
Part of me almost hopes that somebody does drop a vial by accident and wipes out 5.9 billion people on this globe. I'd almost rather take my chances at being one of the lucky survivors than continue watching this bullshit parade and the naivete of all the silly viewers.
-Fantastic Lad. The Craziest Fuck In ANY Room!
P.S. Most artists and media producers don't even realize where their ideas come from. Population control doesn't happen on a surface level anymore. Hasn't for a long, long time.
same ol stuff (Score:1)
But IBM is not unaccustom to doing this sort of press release simply for the publicity of it.
I seem to remember a press release (which they had to buy add space to get it published I guess) back in the early 90's. 92 or 93 maybe. They claimed to have created the worlds first 1024 bit cpu.
I wouldnt suggest they are building this stuff for PR. I am just saying that is the purpose of the press release (just like most articles of this sort). Oh ya, someones cool project at IBM needs to keep getting funding of course.
Just dont assume it will be useable for anything practicle in OUR lifetime.
It took 20 years to get from 8 bit to 64 bit. And most of us use 32 bit just like we did 10 years ago.(this refers to commodity hardware, not the big iron).
Ah screw it.Never mind. Its cool stuff no matter what the press geeks do with it.
diode laser drivers (Score:1)
Tech Support (Score:1)
"voltage inverter?" (Score:3, Informative)
How do "holes" carry current? (Score:1)
If so, I don't see the difference between electrons carrying current and holes carrying current.
Re:Can you imagine.. (Score:1)
Of course, there are many other intriguing fields of research that this opens up, such as the problem of making a processor that consists of only 1 nanotube and creating some kind of networking interface that would allow individual nanotubes to communicate.
So please, before you go off blindly moderating posts such as these, please think of the questions that they are really asking, rather than your ingrained Slashdot instincts.
Re:AND and OR? (Score:2)
A transistor either switches a current path off (output_on = power_on AND NOT control_on) or it switches it on (output_on = power_on AND control_on).
Those are the real building blocks. Larger structures like gates and flip-flops are combinations of those two facts.
Some circuits use multi-leveled logic, but those have to be converted to boolean logic* before they can get anywhere near your computer.
--Blair
* - or whatever passes for it at the NY Times...
Re:Blacks, Caucasians, Indians (Score:1)
Re:Blacks, Caucasians, Indians (Score:1)
Re:Blacks, Caucasians, Indians (Score:1)
Re:AND and OR? (Score:1)
You only need NAND to do whatever you want.
NAND(A,A) => NOT(A)
NAND(NAND(A,A),NAND(B,B)) => OR(A,B)
etc..etc.. realy not that hard..
For most logic implementations, this is the way it is done. (although sometimes NOR is used instead).
Anyway, have a look at Randall Hyde's Art of Assembly for a source you can trust about it.
The idea is, NAND gates are cheaper than other gates, and it's easier to build logic structures with the same basic blocks.