This is just insane … apparently IBM has made some serious advances in the NanoTech field and is now talking about the fact that molecular computing is closer to being a reality. I can remember not very long ago that chip manufacturers were talking about reaching the upper limit of silicon based CPU’s where the switches were becoming so small and tightly packed that single atoms were responsible for processing errors, now we are looking at the potential for single atoms to *be* the switches themselves … all very clever stuff.
The molecule being used for this process is called naphthalocyanine which contains two hydrogen atoms in it inner core which has two possible positions making them good candidates for storing binary data. These processes turn this molecule into a microscoping logic-gate.
Although this isn’t the first time a molecular switch has been made it appears to be a very strong candidate so far for actually making the jump from absolute zero degrees to a working room temperature example!
This is just insane … apparently IBM has made some serious advances in the NanoTech field and is now talking about the fact that molecular computing is closer to being a reality. I can remember not very long ago that chip manufacturers were talking about reaching the upper limit of silicon based CPU’s where the switches were becoming so small and tightly packed that single atoms were responsible for processing errors, now we are looking at the potential for single atoms to *be* the switches themselves … all very clever stuff.
The molecule being used for this process is called naphthalocyanine which contains two hydrogen atoms in it inner core which has two possible positions making them good candidates for storing binary data. These processes turn this molecule into a microscoping logic-gate.
Although this isn’t the first time a molecular switch has been made it appears to be a very strong candidate so far for actually making the jump from absolute zero degrees to a working room temperature example!