LogicGate
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IBM turns metal oxides into non-volatile chips through liquid currents
IBM is worried that we're reaching the end of the road for CMOS technology -- that we need new materials beyond silicon to keep the power draw down in chips as their performance goes up. It may keep future circuitry extra-lean through a new technique that puts a metal oxide in silicon's place and allows for non-volatile processors and memory. By running ionized liquid electrolytes in currents through the oxide, the company can switch that oxide from an insulator to a conductor (and vice versa) that can reliably maintain its state, even when there's no power. The trick would let a logic gate or switch kick into action only when there's an event, rather than needing constant jolts of electricity -- and without the pressure or temperature changes that had ruled out metal oxides for chips in the past. We're still far from replacing silicon with more efficient oxides given the early state of IBM's work, but having a consistent method is an important first step.
Researchers take nanowire transistors vertical, double up on density
3D silicon is all the rage, and now nanowire transistors have further potential to keep Moore's Law on life support. Researchers at A*STAR have found a way to double the number of transistors on a chip by placing the atomic-scale wires vertically, rather than in the run-of-the-mill planar mode, creating two "wrap-around gates" that put a pair of transistors on a single nanowire. In the future, the tech could be merged with tunnel field effect transistors -- which use dissimilar semiconductor materials -- to create a markedly denser design. That combo would also burn a miniscule percentage of the power required conventionally, according to the scientists, making it useful for low-powered processors, logic boards and non-volatile memory, for starters. So, a certain Intel founder might keep being right after all, at least for a few years more.
Researchers say crab-based computing possible, lobsters throw up claws in disbelief
IBM's Holey Optochip? Yawn. Fujitsu's K supercomputer? Yesterday's news. Forget about boring old conventional computing stuff, the future of computer technology lies in crabs -- lots and lots of crabs. Researchers at Kobe University and the University of the West of England's Unconventional Computing Centre have discovered that properly herded crabs can signal the AND, OR and NOT arguments essential to computers, not to mention those crucial 1s and 0s. Forcing two swarms of crabs into one, for instance, represents the OR gate -- a trick the computational crustaceans pulled off fairly reliably. Not every operation was pincer perfect, however, as the crabs tended to stumble a bit through attempts at signaling the AND function. At least guiding a group of crabs isn't as tough as herding cats -- researchers used a shadow to imitate a predatory bird and direct the hapless creatures accordingly. Sure, it may not be the first biological computer, but it just might be the first fear-based computer.
Researchers develop programmable molecular circuitry for living cells
Researchers at the UCSF School of Pharmacy's Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, led by Christopher A. Voigt have just published a paper which promises to get your circuits moving. The team has been working with E. coli bacteria to build logic gates like the ones found in computers directly into cells, making it possible to rewire and program them. The simple logic gates used in the experiment were built into genes then inserted into E. coli cells. The logic gates then acted as the communicator between the separate strains, allowing them to be connected together.The use of logic gates in cells could make it possible to tackle more complicated processes, so that science can begin to use cells at the molecular level for biomedical advances.
