From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Mon May 20 2002 - 08:47:53 MDT
On Sun, 19 May 2002, Hal Finney wrote:
> The problem is that it will take an incredibly aggressive R&D schedule
> to get any of the new technologies out of the lab and into commercial
> production in 10 years. Chips are BIG business. Think about how many
> chips come off the assembly lines every year. Consider changing every
> chip manufacturing foundary into the world to instead make something
Self-assembled molecular circuits don't use foundry processes. Sure, you
can coat existing silicon with a layer of a 2d molecular circuit crystal
(plus, move towards nanolithoprinter with polymer inks), or two, but here
silicon is just a more or less smart carrier material. This is just
synthetic organic chemistry, and maybe a touch of molecular biology.
Nothing very expensive, though it will take its toll in R&D, before you
have something that works. Machine-phase self-rep nanorobotics is of
course an entirely different kettle of fish.
> with carbon nanotubes, at commercial levels of quality, consistency,
> yield and testability. We have to have that in ten years, or else
> Moore's Law is going to fail (or at least hiccup).
I'm actually fairly optimistic here, at least as far as molecular memories
are concerned. We should have them by 2012, and reconfigurable molecular
logic soon after. First computronium will take at least a decade longer,
though.
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