IBM looks to DNA to sustain Moore's Law
As chip geometries get infinitesimally small, IBM is looking to DNA to make the manufacture of future chips feasible.
On Monday, IBM researchers and collaborator Paul W.K. Rothemund, of the California Institute of Technology, announced an advancement of a method to arrange DNA origami structures on surfaces compatible with today's semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
Low concentrations of triangular DNA origami bind to wide lines on a lithographically patterned surface.
(Credit: PRNewsFoto/IBM)"The cost involved in shrinking (chip) features to improve performance is a limiting factor in keeping pace with Moore's Law and a concern across the semiconductor industry," said Spike Narayan, a manager in the Science & Technology division of IBM Research, in a statement.
Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. For more than four decades, chip manufacturers have been able to consistently shrink chip geometries, allowing Moore's Law to remain on track.
But this may not be sustainable for chips with geometries under 22 nanometers. By 2014, the high cost of semiconductor manufacturing equipment will threaten Moore's Law, "altering the fundamental economics of the industry," according to a report released in June by iSuppli. New chip plants typically cost billions of dollars to build, and the tab goes up as chip circuits get smaller.
Individual triangular DNA origami adhere to a template with properly sized triangular features.
(Credit: PRNewsFoto/IBM)IBM uses DNA molecules as scaffolding--where millions of carbon nanotubes could be deposited and self-assembled into precise patterns by sticking to the DNA molecules. This approach might provide a way to reach sub-22-nanometer lithography--down to 6 nanometers--more economically, according to a paper to be published in the September issue of Nature Nanotechnology, entitled "Placement and orientation of DNA nanostructures on lithographically patterned surfaces." It was co-authored by IBM and Caltech scientists.
"The utility of this approach lies in the fact that the positioned DNA nanostructures can serve as scaffolds, or miniature circuit boards, for the precise assembly of components, such as carbon nanotubes, nanowires, and nanoparticles," according to IBM. The combination of self-assembly with today's fabrication technology eventually could lead to substantial savings in the most expensive and challenging part of the chipmaking process, IBM said.
The lithographic templates, for chip fabrication, were made by IBM using traditional semiconductor techniques, the same used to make the chips found in today's computers, to etch out patterns.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
If software authors were forced to iterate improvement at the rate of Moore's law, there would be little pressure on the hardware. My 2003 Dell with Ubuntu boots faster than our new Dell Precision workstation - right out of the box. Why is the USB driver for my Blackberry (required just to charge it $@??) over 13 Mb???
Give me a break.
my 2c
Please compare your Dell Lattitude to what existed 20 years ago.
The future is three-dimensional circuits.
It would be interesting if they could figure out some way of creating stable structures of quarks, but the chances of that happening any time soon is very very unlikely.
It is hard enough to create particles with more than 3 quarks since they just fall apart so quickly. (last i checked in was the pentaquark)
As an extension on your idea, and the more likely outcome, is optical, then 3D with optical.
If i remember correct, it was just recently that they found a decent way to produce lasers on silicon, so a realistic time-scale of 10 years, 20 at most, unless this whole "JUST THROW MORE CORES AT IT" mentality continues to crazy numbers.
https://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/504/topol.html
With my current computing platform, I'm only able to get the answer "41". Perhaps a rounding error ....
After all, I hear nothing about using Quantum Physics, Quantum Mechanics and Elementary Particle Physics being mentioned. Now using Elementary Particle's, items inside the items of an Atom, would make big news. Anyone else have a better idea? I'd like to hear or read about it.
I think you need to read Science Magazine, every week they have at least 1 story about 2D stuff for computers.
For others reading this 2D means length, width, but no thickness ( well only 1 atom thick ). :)
And they are storing data on the spin of a electron. It's not quite qwarks yet but they are working on it with trinary storage ( 0,1,2,10,11,12,20...)
- by KjenkinsJC September 16, 2009 11:52 AM PDT
- Your view is too restricted. Remember when there was a prediction of a world wide market of 1 millions PC's? (ironically IBM made that prediction) I worked in I.T. when 2 megs was the amount of storage you had on your hard drive, (if you could afford one) memory might have been 64K. We couldn't imagine a need for giga bytes of disk and mega bytes of memory. New technologies such as IBM's use of DNA will take years to develope but they will open new doors that don't even exist today. (some would say not all good). THe convergence of nano and computer tech is beginning to happend with amazing implecations.
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