Moderator: Vraith
-Mhoram
And a very good book on Quantum Computing has just come out by a science writter 4 the Wall Street Journal, who incidentally lives in NM--here is a review:Intel getting into micro-machines
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 25, 2001, 6:15 PM PT
Intel thinks small with microdevices
Marlene Bourne, senior analyst, Cahners In-Stat Group
Micro-refrigerators, mini-tweezers for microbiologists, wireless antenna controllers--these are the types of products Intel could start producing with its move into microelectrical mechanics.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker is putting venture capital and research and development into Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), which can be thought of as chips that think and move.
MEMS systems are essentially semiconductors with mechanical parts that both harvest data and issue commands based on the data. A MEMS with a miniature tuning fork, for instance, can gather information about the direction of sound waves, which can prompt a command to shift the position of a microphone for better sound quality.
One application Intel will likely target is "microfluidic" devices, or mini-refrigerators inside PCs that squelch internal heat, said Bob Rao, an Intel Fellow who is managing the company's MEMS research.
Like a home refrigerator, a micro-refrigerator depends on liquids, and "to move this fluid around, you need little pumps and valves," he said.
The MEMS market has actually been around for years. Brake and engine-heat sensors are examples of MEMS devices found inside cars today.
Intel's move into the market comes as a result of opportunity and convenience. The market is about to grow dramatically, according to some analysts. At the same time, it isn't a difficult one for Intel to enter.
"MEMS technology turns out to be very close in nature to silicon technologies. The kind of things we have to do are similar," said Sunlin Chou, senior vice president of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group. "With an incremental spending on tools, we have been able to fabricate MEMS devices and rapidly move into prototyping."
Chou pointed out that MEMS devices also take advantage of Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors a chip can hold will double every 18 to 24 months, as transistor size shrinks. Over time, manufacturers can shrink the transistors, making chips smaller, more reliable, less power-hungry and cheaper to make.
"The advantage Intel has in this field is in yield management and manufacturing," Chou said.
While similar to microprocessors, MEMS devices require additional manufacturing techniques because they contain mechanical elements. Typically, the chip is finished like a microprocessor and then "silicon or other components are etched away to free up the moving parts," said Rao.
The company is taking a multipronged approach to the market. Rao is managing research projects at Intel's plant in Israel.
Concurrently, Intel Capital, the company's venture-funding arm, is making seed investments in MEMS companies such as North Carolina-based Cronos Integrated Microsystems. (Following Intel's investment, Cronos was acquired by JDS Uniphase.)
So far, six venture investments have been publicly disclosed. Generally, these seed investments range from $1 million to $5 million, said Alex Wong, an executive with Intel Capital.
Competitors, of course, aren't sitting still. Texas Instruments, which makes MEMS devices, showed off a MEMS project this week that allows corporations to network computers through laser beams and rotating mirrors, rather than cables.
While most MEMS devices to date have been used to gather ambient data like temperature or pressure, they are becoming more complex, said Marlene Bourne, senior analyst at Cahners In-Stat Group.
The pharmaceutical industry, for example, is adopting MEMS devices rapidly for new drug testing. Another lucrative application: blood-screening sensors that can perform complete lab tests at bedside.
As a whole, MEMS devices accounted for $3 billion in revenue in 2000. By 2005, the market will quadruple to $12 billion, Bourne said. More importantly, many of the more complex MEMS parts for the optical communications industry could sell for several hundred dollars each, she said.
By contrast, sensors will drop to an average price of $1, Bourne said.
The MEMS effort also fits with Intel's plan, begun last decade, to diversify its business beyond the PC. Though diversification started slowly, the pace has been picking up. The rapid decline of PC processors will also likely light a fire under the effort.
"What you are seeing is steam picking up on groundwork that was put down years ago," said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. "No doubt about it, (PC microprocessors) will be a growing business, but the huge growth days of the '80s and '90s are gone."
Harnessing Atoms to Create Superfast Computers
By IAN FOSTER
A SHORTCUT THROUGH TIME
The Path to the Quantum Computer
By George Johnson.
George Johnson's "Shortcut Through Time" addresses one of the most
excruciatingly complex, mysterious and deeply fascinating topics in
modern science, namely quantum computing: the manipulation of quantum
states to perform computations far faster than is possible on any
conventional computer. The book's remarkable achievement is that it
makes this deeply arcane topic accessible and understandable - even, I
think, for the reader unsophisticated in physics or computing. It
opens a door to broader understanding of this important field and sets
a new standard for science writing.
I was originally reluctant to review this book. I am a computer
scientist with a guilty secret: I've never really understood quantum
computing. How could I write a review without revealing my ignorance?
However, as I began the preface, I became intrigued and then
excited. Mr. Johnson, a contributing science writer for The New York
Times, says he wrote the book not to profile the personalities in the
field, but to lead the reader toward a tentative understanding of
quantum computing. To take the reader along as he, the writer, strains
"to grasp an idea with an imprecise metaphor, only to discard it for
another with a tighter fit, closing in on an airy notion from several
directions, triangulating on approximate truth." And: "I want the
reader to feel that we are both on the same side - outsiders seeking a
foothold on the slippery granite face of a new idea."
I was hooked. So much of what passes for science writing nowadays is
really human-interest journalism, focused on the quirks and conflicts
of science's eccentric personalities, and is only incidentally
concerned with science itself. Yet here was someone who proposed to
take a problem at the forefront of science and address it on its own
terms. Perhaps my ignorance was a virtue: I could serve as an
experimental subject, reading the book and reporting on whether I
arrived at the promised land.
Approached from this perspective, the book took on the allure of a
good mystery. Mr. Johnson, like a seasoned crime writer, sets the
scene and then introduces a series of increasingly intriguing
metaphors, each of which unveils another aspect of Q.C., as I'll call
it. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Q.C.'s secret could be
revealed at the turn of any page. For me, the initial forays covered
familiar ground. But Mr. Johnson soon entered unfamiliar territory,
exploring the mysteries of superposition and entanglement.
Along the way, we discover that we are dealing not with an obscure and
eccentric academic curiosity, but with a dangerous character. (In
addition to mystery, we have drama!) Q.C., it has been shown in the
last few years, could defeat some of the fundamental codes that secure
many electronic communications. The security of these public key
cryptography mechanisms relies on the fact that on even the fastest
computers, performing a particular computation - factoring, or
breaking into their constituent pieces, large numbers - takes an
unimaginably long time. Yet in 1994 Peter Shor, a mathematician,
showed how Q.C. could do this same operation much faster - in a few
minutes. Q.C. could provide a shortcut through time.
Just why this is possible is at the heart of this concise but dense
book. The particulars depend on the clever manipulations of two
fundamental properties of the quantum world - superposition and
entanglement. Superposition lets a single quantum switch be on and off
at the same time; entanglement allows the state of one quantum switch
to be linked with that of another. Set up just right, a collection of
such quantum switches can, in principle, be used to build a computer
that manipulates many numbers at once - transforming millions of
numbers in one step, or, via mind-numbingly complex manipulations,
factoring the numbers that support our financial and national
security.
Fortunately for those who use codes to maintain secrets, we also learn
that Q.C. does not exist yet, at least not in a useful form. As
Mr. Johnson notes, the world record for building a quantum computer
involves just seven qubits (quantum switches, pronounced like the word
cubits) operating for less than a second. A quantum computer with
several thousand qubits and able to run for hours is not expected
anytime soon. The problems involved in scaling up are complex and hard
to resolve. They relate to the tendency of superposed quantum states
to collapse to a single value - either on or off - when the real world
impinges.
"A Shortcut Through Time" is not all metaphor. It also touches on the
history of this young field, noting a prescient paper by the physicist
Richard P. Feynman, who postulated in 1982 that quantum computing
might be possible. (Also mentioned is the independent work by a less
famous but just as visionary physicist, Paul Benioff, formerly of the
Argonne National Laboratory.) But what makes this book a delight and a
rare gem of science writing is the science itself, and Mr. Johnson's
engagement with that science. He promises that he is not going to
cheat by implying omniscience with his subject), and he does not. The
result is fascinating and tremendously engaging.
After all this, you may be wondering whether I now understand quantum
computing. Well, there are some who argue that quantum physics is so
foreign to human experience that no one can truly understand it, only
manipulate its mathematical rules. Mr. Johnson does not use
mathematics and he skips many details. ("We are operating here on a
need-to-know basis," he states.) But I found that with him at my side,
I could reach that delicate mental state that feels like
understanding. Now this state, like a quantum superposition, may
collapse to ignorance when I try to explain it to someone, but in the
meantime, I feel less guilty.
Here's the 'Nanotechnology' section of the New Scientist website: www.newscientist.com/hottopics/tech/tec ... technologyNanotube chip could hold 10 gigabits
By Will Knight
A computer memory chip based on carbon nanotubes has passed a manufacturing milestone, according to the US company developing the technology.
The prototype chip would store information using hundreds of billions of nanotubes with a theoretical capacity of 10 gigabits of data, says Nantero, based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Once fully developed, the company says nanoscale random access memory (NRAM) could hold more data that existing types of RAM and would also be non-volatile, meaning data would not be lost when the power is been turned off. Computers using such memory could boot up almost instantly. Nantero also claims that NRAM would be much faster than current non-volatile memory, such as Flash.
Nantero is not the only company hoping to use carbon nanotubes to make improved types of computer memory. But the company believes its advantage lies in the fact that its chips can be made using existing silicon manufacturing methods and would therefore be relatively cheap to make.
Random arrangement
Instead of trying to grow nanotubes in the correct alignment, Nantero applies them randomly across the entire surface of a silicon wafer. It then uses existing lithographic equipment to etch away the nanotubes that are not in the correct alignment.
"The creative breakthrough is to put nanotubes everywhere," Nantero's CEO Greg Schmergel told New Scientist.
The nanotubes remaining after etching are arranged in bunches across pairs of electrodes on the surface of the wafer. Applying a small electrical field alters the tubes so that they either bridge the gap between the electrodes or do not. These two states result in different conductivity that is easy to detect and can be used to represent a binary one or zero.
Nantero has now produced a wafer dotted with nanotube clumps, but is still developing the way of addressing each individual bunch. Schmergel says this is just a matter of harnessing existing silicon electronics technology.
Cees Dekker, an expert in carbon nanotubes at Delft University in the Netherlands, says the fabrication technique appears workable. But he says a potential problem lies in the difficulty of separating the different types of nanotubes that are created together during their creation.
"You have to find a way to deal with both semiconducting- and metallic-type nanotubes, which have rather different electrical properties," he told New Scientist.
Schmergel expects to have NRAM memory capable of storing up to four megabits in 18 months and components that could compete with current types of RAM in around three years.
"If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make?"
Nanotechnology Pioneer Slays 'Grey Goo' Myths (June 9, 2004) — Eric Drexler, known as the father of nanotechnology, has published a paper that admits that self-replicating machines are not vital for large-scale molecular manufacture, and that nanotechnology-based fabrication can be thoroughly non-biological and inherently safe.
The story actually starts with the germs, which are normally associated with gastrointestinal disease. But these bugs are engineered to lose their deadly payload, as it were, and to locate tumors in the body instead.
Once the cancerous tissue is found, the bacteria are engineered to release cancer-fighting drugs.
"This is the world’s first nanorobot for active medical treatment,” stated the South Korean Ministry of Science.
How to the bacteria find the tumors? Like all "targeting" treatments to date, they are engineered to have receptors that bond biochemicals secreted by the diseased tissue. Normal, healthy cells do not secrete such chemicals.
The "bacteriobot has a sensing function to diagnose the cancer," explains Park, head of the Robot Research Initiative at Chonnam.
Why salmonella? For one thing, they're easy to grow in the lab. For another, these bacteria have a limb called a flagella, a sort of single leg that rotates madly and propels them forward, so they can reach the tumorous tissue in the body.
