Hewlett-Packard will this week present its strategy for
a computing future based around nanotechnology, rather than
traditional silicon processors.
The company has invited scientists to a symposium being held at
HP labs on 25 March to discuss the future of Moore’s Law. The law,
formulated by Intel founder Gordon Moore, states that the number of
transistors on a chip - ie computing power - doubles every 18
months.
HP is investigating the types of technology that will be
required to continue improving basic computing capability in the
future, when the industry will hit economic or physical limitations
to the continuation of Moore’s Law.
At the symposium HP researchers will be joined by 16 prominent
scientists from universities, national labs, scientific institutes
and companies around the world.
Stan Williams, HP senior fellow and director, quantum science
research, HP Labs, said, "Computers of tomorrow could be quite
different from what they are today. When you can make a computing
appliance so tiny that it could fit across the width of a hair, you
could enable many different things to become ‘smart’.
"Computing could become as ubiquitous as electricity - it is
just there, making things work. The possibilities are limited only
by human imagination."
In a paper covering nanotechnology, HP researchers said
molecular electronics will eventually provide a way to build
circuits with critical dimensions of a few nanometers.
IBM’s famous demonstration of writing its name in atoms using a
scanning tunneling microscope, showed it was possible to manipulate
materials at an atomic level. This procedure cannot be scaled up to
fabricate large quantities of nanochips.
Williams said HP was researching cost-effective methods of
fabrication for nanochips HP researchers are also looking at a
variety of fabrication processes, from nano-imprint lithography - a
kind of production process akin to a traditional printing press -
to chemical self-assembly by growing silicon nanowires between
electrodes.