Sueball
That central molecule appears to have rounded corners, Apples lawyers will be in contact soon.
The end times for Moore's Law aren't quite at hand, but we now know what the silicon-killer might look like: single-molecule transistors that can switch at the single electron level. That's what a multinational team of boffins working with the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) say they've created. The transistor consists of …
Well, assuming that a small electron microscope has a footprint of 1m squared, a core i7 with a transistor count of 1,400,000,000 would fill a space measuring roughly 37.4km by 37.4km, so long as the interconnects are negligible in size.
However, those of you worrying about the implications for Moore's law will be relieved to hear that scope has been identified for die size reduction by building a second story of floor space over the next two years, allowing the transistor count to be doubled. Further increases in transistor density may be possible with no further reduction in transistor size.
If you need to ask about the performance per Watt, this is not the processor for you.
A bit negative aren't we? I wonder what the performance of the world's first germanium alloy-junction transistor was like back in Bell labs?
I find it hard to imagine that in a few decades, they'll be able to integrate maybe 20 to 200 billion of these on one small chip, along with all the wiring, and sell that chip for $100 or less. But on the other hand if you'd forseen the billion-transistor CPU back in 1960, few would have believed it was even a theoretical possibility, let alone reality in the late naughties.
Ummm Nigel...
As a proof of concept it's nice, and a SEM isn't as big as it used to be, but you still need a roomful of equipment ( assuming you want the vacuum pump in the same room, wear earplugs...) to make it go..
Mind.. from an aspect of biology this thing is interesting, as it has the potential to answer some questions about the how-and-why of the molecular processes that make us go..