The shrinking size of features on modern processors is slowly approaching a limit where the wiring on chips will only be a few atoms across. As this point approaches, both making these features and controlling the flow of current through them becomes a serious challenge, one that bumps up against basic limits of materials.

During my visit to IBM's Watson Research Center, it was clear that people in the company are already thinking about what to do when they run into these limits. For at least some of them, the answer would involve a radical departure from traditional chipmaking approaches, switching from traditional semiconductors to carbon nanotubes. And, while I was there, the team was preparing a paper that would report some significant progress: a chip with 10,000 working transistors made from nanotubes, formed at a density that's two orders of magnitude higher than any previously reported effort.


More. . .

IBM's researchers have made another breakthrough in their development of carbon nanotube technology, packing more than 10,000 working transistors made of the substance onto a single chip.

It is now a decade since IBM first announced a process for fabricating carbon nanotubes in a way that could make them useable for processors. Although silicon has allowed the industry to keep making transistors smaller and smaller, it does not work properly at the nanoscale. Another substance will have to take over for the really tiny processors of the future.

Such processors will be needed to make computing devices and sensors smaller and more energy-efficient.


More . . .