IBM scientists tout tool to possibly build atom-size computers

Asso ciated Free Press

Scientists at an IBM research center in Silicon Valley have created a magnetism-manipulating tool suited to building molecular computers, the company revealed.

The development was touted as a step toward making computers based on the spin of electrons and atoms.

"We have a tool in place to develop the product of the future," said German-born researcher Andreas Heinrich of IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California.

"We all know we can't shrink the silicon-based technology used in today's computers down to the atomic level. We have to look at a radically different concept, and that is what we are doing here."

The new method was called "spin-excitation spectroscopy" and used a specially-designed microscope capable of creating magnetic fields as much as 140,000 times stronger than that of the Earth, scientists said.

"We can study the magnetic phenomena used in hard drives, but on the scale of single atoms," Heinrich told AFP. "It could enable us, in the very far future, to be able to build computer devices on an atomic scale."

Awesome!

It would be nice to have an atom sized computer - or a bunch of them.

Imagine if a couple of those atom sized computers are put togather in one averege size computer?

This is sort of like the computer made by the Israelies that ran on DNA. I can't find the link to it, but using Nanotechnology, which this is along the lines of, a computer sized up to a modern one would run 13 trillion times faster and would hold an unbelievable amount of information as it would run on DNA.

Souljah
A computer in an atomic scale is not the same thing as a computer the size of an atom.

Today’s transistors are almost at an atomic scale, so the difference is more in the components than in the size.

In fact, Intel has made an transistor that is 80 atoms and 3 atoms thick.


DarkHelmet

Is this what you were talking about?

As you can see in the article, that is not what we call a computer, it is a computer but not a computer that can do any kind of task, as do the ones we use everyday

It's been awhile since my theoretical computer class, but if I remember right, transisters are getting to the point where they are going to have to find another way to get the electrons from point A to point B (dont worry this isnt for a long time) and also Moore's law is slowing down.

Yes that is the link, and yes, this computer can only perform simple tasks. I think one example they used was that it could say whether there is an odd or even amount of zeros or ones in a sequence of numbers with 0's and 1's (011010101010 and so on) BUT, In the future, the same technique will be used to make supercomputers capable of making ordinary desktops be tons more powerful than the most powerful computer on Earth today.

Originally posted by XphilesPhan
also Moore's law is slowing down.

With the development of nanotechnology, I wouldn't doubt if this is actually accelerated, not decreased.

Originally posted by DarkHelmet

Originally posted by XphilesPhan
also Moore's law is slowing down.

With the development of nanotechnology, I wouldn't doubt if this is actually accelerated, not decreased.

Actually, what is called Moore's law is about integrated circuits, so it does not apply in other cases.

Here is a link to discussion about Moore's Law and "The Grid" on the CERN (developers of the World Wide Web) website. What's "The Grid"? CERN , developer of "The Grid", says it will be the successor to the Web. And that link is:


gridcafe.web.cern.ch...


This link also contains a handy graphic representation of Moore's Law.

So when will "The Grid" become available? It's under development now, so probably we should check back periodically with the CERN website. Or is ATS already doing Beta testing of "The Grid"?