USER COMMENTS 28 comment(s)
|Mr Fusion! (3:29pm EST Fri Jun 24 2005)
Hahahaha what a good trilogy, when do you think they're going to remake those? Hell they're remaking all the other classics from 20-30 years ago (they're even doing a Warriors remake I think, I don't think it'll turn out well, but who knows).
- by DrSengir
|Great… but (3:33pm EST Fri Jun 24 2005)
How long will it take for these guys to make 60 million transistors required for a single processor?
- by ArcherB
|I think I read this (4:28pm EST Fri Jun 24 2005)
like a week ago - by on toms
|ages… (5:06pm EST Fri Jun 24 2005)
it would take years…decades to make a modern cpu - by Bluemonkey
|Give it time (8:00pm EST Fri Jun 24 2005)
The infinite monkey theorem. Eventually these bacteria will produce a brand new AMD Athlon 64. - by Monkey
|But before that.. (8:08pm EST Fri Jun 24 2005)
They'll produce the most pure photo of porn you ever saw!!! - by Porrrrrn!
|Re: on toms and ArcherB (8:51pm EST Fri Jun 24 2005)
Really? that's odd, because their own website says that the news was broken on the 22nd or the 23rd of this month, this year, which is one or two days ago.
Although no mention is made of the speed at which they build these wires, it is undoubtedly a rather short time per wire. the problem will be harvesting wires of appropriate length and/or cutting down wires to work in the circuit, then placing them. In large vats of trillions or quadrillions or more Geobacter, enough wires for a few thousand processors could probably be generated in a day or less. Of course that's speculation, but it sounds conservative when you consider only an order of billions of wires would be needed for a CPU, and the vat would contain quadrillions of wire-building monsters, which is millions of times as many as would be needed to produce enough wires for one processor. So even if they all made only one wire per day, which is very slow for a little microorganism to perform a microtask, and even if only one in a thousand wires could be harvested properly, then you'd still have a thousand or so processor's worth of wires per day, which isn't bad for a vat of little bugs.
Let's say that they need a 20 micrometer bubble in which to build their wire. 4/3 * pi * (20*10^-6 m)^3 = 3.35*10^-14 m^3. That's 29.8 trillion buggers per cubic meter. So it's not like they take up much room.
- by DrSengir
|well (9:57pm EST Fri Jun 24 2005)
Next logical step should be directed towards genetically engineering bacteria to grow transistors on a microscopic lattice of bucky tubes, *glass nano-fiber and nano batteries.
We can replace current linear non-repairing technology with biotechnology by blending organics with nano tech.
*(Bioluminescent and photo sensitive bacteria can be used for communication over the glass nano-fibers. )
Gelatinous computers, wet-ware… what ever you want to call it, this could be very cool shit.
- by GenePhreak
|These nanowires are not permanent (12:17am EST Sat Jun 25 2005)
It seems if the Geobacter need to move to another location, these nanowires are discarded and regenerated, rather than dragged along as baggage. That's the new paradigm… - by agar
|Polymorphing CPU (2:04am EST Sun Jun 26 2005)
You could have CPUs that are modify themselves over time for different tasks. Maybe affect the direction the bacteria go to make them arrange themselves a certain way. - by Frobozz
|The Infinite (3:44am EST Sun Jun 26 2005)
The Infinite Monkey therome is crap. First it is a scientific mathamatical moddel (ie given enough time a certain sequence of numbers will present themselves). What one has to realize is that empirical science and Math are the scafolding used to explain life and existance…not life and existance itself. Ill elaborate. What the monkey theorm says is that a creature built of trilions of atoms will function to come to X conclusion within an infinant amount of years. The problem in real life is that you run into the chaos theory barrier. Which basicly says that the simple life system becomes so complext to calculate future probabilities is beyond any plausable calculation. (ie given all the atoms in the universe-q bit style-you still couldnt calculate the absolute occurance of event. Slightly modified you can say that a complex organism will not complete a complex task given infinate opportunity to do so. Both complex systems (the monkey and the processor design) would break down in the process and never complete.
Next week–why Zeno was right - by MasterBlaster
|Monkeys (8:18am EST Sun Jun 26 2005)
The infinite monkey theorum? That an infinite amount of monkeys with typewriters, over and infinite amount of time, will write the complete works of shakespere? Its not crap – its a modal for demonstrating the nature of infinity. Theres no collision with a real-world principle, because its just a modal: obviously there is no such thing as 'an infinite number of monkeys' - by is
|What?? Monkeys???? (8:41am EST Sun Jun 26 2005)
What do you mean there is no such thing as an infinite number of monkeys??? Have you never met my in-laws???? - by inthemonkeymiddle
|nanobot (8:06pm EST Sun Jun 26 2005)
does that mean we can get pc stuff that can fuse onto our arm by changing shape? - by cockspeed
|Nanowires too slow… (9:44pm EST Sun Jun 26 2005)
A one micron long 5 nm diameter nanowire has a capacitance of tens of picofarads and a resistance of tens of kilo-ohms. That means the RC interconnect delay is hundreds of nanoseconds. - by FF
|Also accumulate too much power… (12:17am EST Mon Jun 27 2005)
Not to mention that at 1V operating voltage and 1 GHz operating frequency, the power dissipated is tens of milliwatts. Not very much by itself but a million of these will add up to tens of kilowatts. - by FF
|Interesting like a DNA computer? (1:37am EST Mon Jun 27 2005)
I saw a good website today that talked about how the next revolution in AI and the IT profession will take place in the biotech arena, there are neural prosthesis that will replace parts of your brain with these chips, biogrounds . c o m - by sechsechs
|monkeys… (10:37am EST Mon Jun 27 2005)
I think that could work, but what do you do with all the monkey poop? I guess you could use those bacteria to turn it into electricity - by Tyrone
|a thought on placement (11:21am EST Mon Jun 27 2005)
i did not RTFA (this time — but there have been a couple of reports on these bugs, over the past year, or so)… but… assuming that these critters have some basic mobility, why not just lay down the nutrient layer (using e.g. a mask) in the general pattern that you want the nano-wires to follow, then let the bugs loose? what you end up with should be pretty close to having all of these cute little iron bug droppings laid out along the general path that you wanted for your circuit. apply a controlled EMF, to further align them (i seem to remember reading an article where this was done, while the bacteria were still eating/excreting, lining the bugs up — not just their excreta), bake the wafer to kill the bugs and fuse the iron 'nano-wires'… &c.
this could, conceivably, be used as a step in a modified version of the current lithographic process… nicht? - by asm_amature
|Re: FF (11:25am EST Mon Jun 27 2005)
Where are you getting these numbers from? I just went through and skimmed most of the documents, and there seems to be no mention of the resistivity of these pili. All they are willing to say is that it is “highly conductive”, which I take to mean: “highly conductive when compared to these non-conductive pili we show you”, which is silly and probably means that they don't have good numbers yet to publish. Why they published the results from other, non-conductive pili, I can't say, it sounds like the usual stupid science grad student work, man I hate science, particularly the science performed by grad students.
But anyways, these wires are very short, so their resistance may not be so large. The bigger problem, at least in my opinion, will be the resistance of the joints between wires, and between wires and the semiconducting material. And, more specifically, the capacitance of those joints. Wires themselves don't really have much intrinsic capacitance, as capacitance is caused by voltage differences across distances, and those are both very small within wires. Inter-wire capacitance, which causes crosstalk and other fun stuff, is a problem, but no more so with these wires than any others, and that's what dielectrics are for. So the “RC delay” inherent in these wires is no greater than any other wires.
As for mWs (milliWatts) per wire, that's ridiculous, a wire this size couldn't support that much power, it'd probably explode. The voltage drop across a single length of wire is going to be on the order of uVs (microVolts), or mVs (milliVolts) at worst, and at a few tens of kOhms, assuming that you're right and one length of wire has a few tens of kOhms resistance, is going to result in nWs or uWs in the worst case dissipation scenario. Those are pretty high estimates, and you have to remember that much of the time there is going to be a 0V (or very close to it) drop across a wire, so the wire dissipation will be negligable. The RC delay problem could be a problem in congested designs, but no more of a problem than it is now.
- by DrSengir
|aligment (11:31am EST Mon Jun 27 2005)
Nicht, well, probably.
The way the article described their activities, it seems the little buggers all sort of attach to chunks of soluble iron oxides, and just sort of sit there. Some mention was made about movement to oxidize organic molecules, but other then that it would seem that they don't like to move very much. That aside, I'm sure it's possible to arrange Iron oxides and hydrocarbons such that they lay their wires in good spots, but gealind with the waste Iron and dead multi-micron diameter dead bug on the die is going to be a pain. At that point you might as well make the wires a few microns thick.
- by DrSengir
|ok… i looked (12:23pm EST Mon Jun 27 2005)
don't look like a viable solution for growing neat, orderly rows of long nano-wires… they could be a neat way to clean heavy metal contamination out of e.g. ground-water, though… and the by-product (e.g. the nanowire like excreta) could [conceivably] be separated from solution, and used in producing conductive nano-composites (e.g. fuel-cell membranes, &c.), but i don't see these bugs coming to a chip fab-plant near you, any time in the near future… < shrug > - by asm_amature
|Re: Dr Sengir (11:46am EST Sun Jul 03 2005)
Capacitance for two wires can be calculated from Gauss' Law. The dependence on wire length is much stronger than dependence on spacing.
Resistance for a quantum wire with ballistic transport provides a lower resistance limit for the nanowire. This requires quantum mechanics calculations. - by FF
|Re: too much power (11:51am EST Sun Jul 03 2005)
1 GHz is too fast when the RC is hundreds of nanoseconds. In this case, Ohm's Law should be used for the power dissipated in the nanowire. This would then be tens of microwatts. A billion of these would be tens of kilowatts. - by FF
|Nanotubes and nanowires are slow (4:13pm EST Sun Jul 17 2005)
Capacitance per length in oxide is ~ 2 pF/cm and resistance for ballistic transport is 12.9 kilo-ohm independent of length.
RC ~ 3 million seconds/meter independent of length below a micron.
That means electrical signals in nanowires and nanotubes travel on the order of 0.001 times speed of light, making them poor transmission lines. - by textbook
|Re: textbook (12:27am EST Tue Jul 19 2005)
Your number for capacitance is correct – I must have wrong units somewhere. We also agree on resistance.
RC generally thought to be constant for pure shrinks but since propagation distance is also scaling down, the signal effective speed is indeed falling in proportion to the scaling factor.
Still the individual nanocircuits are not getting any faster, and the more are being used, the more power is consumed and the greater delay at a given stage. - by FF
|ws (4:35pm EST Sun Oct 16 2005)
- by qa
|conductive pili (2:11pm EST Thu Jan 05 2006)
not really sure about pili - by DN