Hey, hand me a supercomputer

William Atkins
Monday, 22 October 2007 17:54

Science - Energy

Scottish, German, and Italian engineers and scientists are studying how nano-sized wires could one day bring the size of a supercomputer so it could be held in one’s hand. The key to reducing the size of computers is learning how wires within microchips behave at tiny diameters.        

Nano-sized wires have diameters that are in the general range of one thousand times smaller than human hair. The extremely small unit of “nano-“ stands for one-billionth, as in one nanometer is one billionth of one meter.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), along with associates from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) and the University of Rome (Italy) are studying these tiny wires, along with miniscule microchips. Their paper, to be published in the journal Science, could eventually lead to much smaller electronics, such as supercomputers the size of laptop computers, later to cell phones, and even later to smaller sized objects.

During their research they found that as wires get smaller in diameter they behave differently. In fact, they have developed a computer program that predicts different behaviors in wires as they get smaller and smaller. This information—how tiny nano-wires behave—is considered a major scientific discovery in computer science.

Professor of engineering and electronics (University of Edinburg) Michael Zaiser, one of the researchers, said of their work: “Holding a supercomputer in the palm of your hand will one day be possible - and we are going to make sure all the wires are in the right place."

Zaiser says such technology could be only a decade away.