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How Small Can Computers Get? Computing in a Molecule

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Dec 30, 2008 05:36 AM
from the nano-pc dept.
Science Technology
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."
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  • well thats more just the processor... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wjh31 (1372867) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @05:50AM (#26266579) Homepage
    rather than the whole computer, i see no reason why consumer computers need ever get any smaller than a phone if you want it portable, or small enough to be fitted to the back of a screen for desktops

    • Re:well thats more just the processor... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mozk (844858) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @05:53AM (#26266591)

      Smaller transistors means more efficient transistors. It's not just about size.

      • Re:well thats more just the processor... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Hylk0r (1295086) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @07:31AM (#26266947)
        Not only that, but it also means you can have millions of (parallel) processors on a tiny chip, which results into more performance.

        • You seem to think computers operate using a combination of "processors" and "magic". You are mistaken.

          • You seem to think computers operate using a combination of "processors" and "magic". You are mistaken.

            You just rocked my world view.

          • You seem to think computers operate using a combination of "processors" and "magic". You are mistaken.

            NOT LISTENING TO YOU!!! The magic smoke is REAL!!! It's real magic!!! And love, the secret ingredient is love, damnit!!!

      • >Smaller transistors means more efficient transistors.

        Not always.
        Those molecule sized transistors are much more efficient yes, but this rule isn't true anymore for the transistors we have in our current CPUs..

        That's why now the frequency that our CPU doesn't increase anymore, it used to be to each generation of transistors were smaller and were more efficient so you could make the CPU run faster, but as this stopped the increase of frequency of our CPU has stopped also.

        • That's why now the frequency that our CPU doesn't increase anymore,

          Efficiency != speed. While speed has remained stagnant over the past several years, power consumption and heat dissipation have gone down or remained the same while computations/second have still steadily gone up, which means higher efficiency as less energy is used to do the same amount of work. If you're still measuring the quality of a processor by its speed, then you have a lot of catching up to do since 2003 when the GHz race ceased to be relevant.

      • Smaller transistors means more efficient transistors. It's not just about size.

        It also means noisy circuits.

    • In the 1960s (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kupfernigk (1190345) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @06:10AM (#26266639)
      There was, as I recall, a TV programme in the UK called "Tomorrow's World" in which the presenter once prophetically ridiculed the idea of handheld computers. After all, what could you possibly use them for?

      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.

        • Re:In the 1960s (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Elladan (17598) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @01:03PM (#26269521)

          Broaden your vision. This is about making smaller components.

          What can you do with smaller components? Well, right away, you can put more stuff in the case. Your iphonanopalmtop thing can have a foldout screen and keyboard, or a bigger battery, or it can simply be lighter. I don't know about you, but I find an iPhone a bit hefty.

          Now, if you look beyond next week, smaller components let you do entirely new things. You think technology is sufficient now to put a computer in a palmtop? Whatever, dude.

          I want a computer in my eyeglasses. Optically corrected screens overlaying my vision. High resolution. And I want them to weigh the same as a normal pair of glasses. Don't forget to throw in a video camera for good measure.

          Can we build something like that now? Or course not. That sort of thing today is either a huge bulky piece of headgear, or it's moderately bulky and has a terrible display. We need better components: much smaller, much lower power, faster.

          Don't ever say we've reached the limits of useful computer technology. Until you're plugged in directly via your visual cortex and have a robot butler who brings you waffles in the morning, we haven't even reached the limits of uses we can already imagine.

    • Re:well thats more just the processor... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by locster (1140121) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @06:45AM (#26266807)

      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.

    • rather than the whole computer, i see no reason why consumer computers need ever get any smaller than a phone if you want it portable, or small enough to be fitted to the back of a screen for desktops

      Why on earth would you want to interact with a computer via a screen? I want reality overlay, and some sort of neural interface (coupled with a gesture interface.) Ideally the computer that performed these functions would be no larger than a single chip to make implantation easier. Nasal cavity, mastoid, something (the latter is a little dangerous, in an impact it could become a serious health issue. But anyway.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jellomizer (103300)

      Remember back in 1984 when the first Mac was released touted at a size of a stack of paper. Considered small and light enough to move anywhere. Then when the laptops (real Laptops, not the luggable) were released while today are considered huge and bulky but at the time they were small enough to carry with your books.
      As computing shrinks our idea of size goes down too. The Stack of paper Mac, was considered really small because computing at the time the easiest job for moving anything with computing was th

  • How about some actual data? This article is extremely watered-down ("1/100 of a nanometre (that is one hundred millionth of a millimetre!)") and essentially has nothing beside speculation about what these transistors can be used for. They don't even say what element the atoms are for fuck's sake. It's pretty amazing that they made the equivalent of 14 transistors with 30 atoms, but the article makes it sound like they just pushed some atoms together under a microscope.

    • I didn't actually RTFA (yet), but they probably did just push atoms together under a microscope (although doing so would require specialized equipment which is more than simply a "microscope"). The damn thing will probably fly apart once it gets above more than few tens of degrees absolute. It's great if they can put a P4 chip on the head of a pin and not need a huge heatsink for it - but it's useless if you need to carry around a couple of thousand pounds worth of cooling equipment to use it.

      (Having read

  • How small can computers get? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Finallyjoined!!! (1158431) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @05:52AM (#26266589)
    Is the wrong question I think. The size of the "computer" is really dictated by the interface. It would be great to have a computer the size of a halfpenny, but how would you access it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by reset_button (903303)
      That's only if a human needs to interface with it directly. If the tiny computer had networking capabilities, you could access it through that. How about a pre-programmed computer that collect data from their surroundings? They could be injected into a person's blood stream for health monitoring, spread around the worlds oceans, and even dispersed in the atmosphere. And that's just one direction that you could go with this. Don't limit your thinking to the computer that you're sitting in front of.

    • That will only be a problem until the invention of a telepathic interface.

      How small can a computer get if it is implanted into your brain?

    • Brain interface. Put the half-penny computer inside your skull and you just got yourself a co-processor :D

    • It would be great to have a computer the size of a halfpenny

      Uh, you mean, like the CPU in the computer that you're using right now?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by IceCreamGuy (904648)
          So how would transistors and gates the size of atoms help, in any way, to fit a computer onto a penny? Are we actually talking about the article here or are we talking about some imaginary full computer that is the size of a penny and has nothing to do with the article? We already have full computers: memory, BIOS, clock, and RAM that are the size of a penny (power supply is a long way off, though), they may not run Windows, but I mean you can go buy a microcontroller that has all of those basic functions f

    • You can always do what we do all the time: make it the size of the current processor and say that it is a million times faster.

    • There are these things called radio waves. They're used to transmit and receive data without the need for wires. You should try 'em, I've heard they're all the rage! I've even heard they can make the receivers/transmitters really small. [everythingusb.com] Personally, I'm pretty sure this a just a fad.
      STOP
      I'll stick with my telegraph, thank you very much.
      STOP

  • Angels dancing on the head of a pin time (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Really the question is how small becomes impractical? I remember the calculator cold wars. It hit the limit when everyone realized how silly a pen one was when you couldn't read the display or use it without a tiny stylus. Eventually the cost of reducing the size will be astronomical so even if you can what's the point? We can make antimatter fuel it's just so insanely expensive that without a major technical leap you aren't going to be powering a car much less a starship with it. There may be uses justifyi

    • Nanocomputers are very practical. Consider only the applications in biotechnology - computers that tiny would allow for everything from intelligent nanobots to do cellular level maintenance to a nanobot conglomerate that could actually replace failing cells - even complicated ones like neurons. And if you can create a neuron, you can create a nervous system. And if you can create a brain... I'm oversimplifying it, but you get the idea. We're not strictly talking about biotechnology anymore, are we?
    • We can make antimatter fuel it's just so insanely expensive that without a major technical leap you aren't going to be powering a car much less a starship with it

      We can? Link to article?

  • halfway there? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wisebabo (638845) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @05:59AM (#26266611) Journal

    The real key to all of these and all non-trivial efforts at Nano technology is for these devices to be self assembling. By non-trivial I mean other than "simple" things like nanotubes or quantum dots. These simple compounds can now be produced in industrial quantities through basically chemical/physical means.

    While it is very very impressive that they can do this, in order for this to become practical, they will have to make millions, no billions, no trillions, no quadrillions... of these things at once or they have to be able to duplicate/reproduce themselves. The (self) "assembler" is, of course, the holy grail of nano-tech.

    Hope I see it before I die and that it doesn't cause my (and all of our) deaths! :P

  • An uncle of mine works as a deputy mayor for the local government here, and was quite pleased to find out that everybody, including him, that worked in the council would be given a free new laptop. Naturally, he imagined that it would be smaller and faster - alas, now his job is far harder as he has to lug around a big heavy slow piece of shite.

    Meanwhile, atomic-scale computing is created, and at this stage its hard to say whether this is a step or a giant leap in the right direction.

  • Soo... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Subverted (1436551) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @06:22AM (#26266707) Homepage
    30 atoms doing the work of 14 transistors... Does this mean that the amount of transistors(logic gates) able to be fit on a chip is now more than exponentially larger? Of course, depending on how easy this would be to adapt to commercial production(and get them talking to eachother) might it be the plateau that Moore's law predicts?

    • > is now more than exponentially larger?

      It's impossible to tell if it's scaling linearly or exponentially or whatever from just one data point; however, unless the atoms are working in a totally different computing paradigm (like quantum computing), it's unlikely to be more than just a linear factor of improvement.

    • might it be the plateau that Moore's law predicts?

      Yes:

      In terms of size [of transistor] you can see that we're approaching the size of atoms which is a fundamental barrier, but it'll be two or three generations before we get that farâ"but that's as far out as we've ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit. By then they'll be able to make bigger chips and have transistor budgets in the billions.

      -Gordon Moore, 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Ultimate_limits_of_the_law [wikipedia.org]

  • I prefer to think in Nanotransistors->far more powerful not-nanoscale computers, at least in mid-term. Molecule sized memory, in example could be a big hit in all areas if an efficient cheap way of production is reached (genetic engineered cows that gives milk of memory? bacterias?).

    But about complete computers, well, still dont know if all components could be stick together in a single molecule, or that it retains all the components functionality in that way.

  • Sometimes I misplace my laptop. How will if find my tiny computer
    in the future? Will I wash it by mistake? Can it take the dry cycle?

    Grrrrr.

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by Drakkenmensch (1255800) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @07:52AM (#26267055)
    And you thought laptop screws were hard to find when you drop them on the living room carpet...

  • But what will you do for I/O, then?

  • What about cosmic rays ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alain Williams (2972) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @08:22AM (#26267219) Homepage
    A bit of radiation whizzing by would not just 'flip a bit' and make the computer/program crash (or even worse - produce an erronious result) but could dislodge a few atoms and physically damage the computer.

    So are we going to have to shield tiny computers with an inch of lead ?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Doesn't normal RAM get hit by cosmic rays and radiation? AFAIK it also suffers from bits being flipped incorrectly. Even Flash memory suffers from individual cells dying without much problem.

      I am sure there are ways to offer redundancy and failover between molecules, eg. you could create self assembling groups which all do the same calculation, a controller could then decide which ones are right based on probability, dead molecules could be marked in the FAT... err I mean the MAT.

      Most of the technology we

    • No, we won't need to shield them with lead. The 6 foot thick heat sinks should suffice.
  • If the atoms get hit by some radiation the molecule should either break or (if hit whilst calculating) return a wrong value. So basically you'll have to cover your computer with 8 cm of lead, which istn't exactly in EU health standards.

  • ... that are facing computing. CPU speed is far out-stripping storage and memory bandwidth. More efficient transistors = nice, but LESS robust to defects = bad. I have to wonder how fragile these atom transistors will be. I'm wondering if we're approaching a point where having too few atoms leads to much higher failure rate.

    I can't be the only one thinking about how expensive this is going to be.

  • Imagine a beowulf cluster of these! And a beowulf cluster of those clusters! Why, I could fit them on a matchstick head, call it W. Bush's brain!

  • Content-free article (Score:4, Informative)

    by autophile (640621) on Tuesday December 30 2008, @10:50AM (#26268271)

    I much prefer to read Eric Drexler's PhD thesis, Molecular Machinery and Manufacturing with Applications to Computing [mit.edu]. Chapter 11 (nanomechanical computational systems) is particularly interesting.

    • You drop a computer, you're screwed.

      If the computer has a hard disk with moving parts and a giant, heavy heatsink that will chip the processor, then yes, you're correct. Drop a mini-ITX PC with a SSD and no heatsink and you'll find that there's really not much you can do to it aside from cracking the motherboard to bring it down. I'm sure you've dropped your cell phone numerous times (If not then congrats, you're abnormally un-clumsy) and unless it's pretty severe, it'll be just fine. One of the primary benefits of solid-state electronics is

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