A carbonic computer: Cylinder head

September 30, 2013 Editor 0

NANOTUBES—tiny, hollow cylinders of carbon—have long been a product seeking an application. They are harder than diamond and dozens of times stronger than steel. Make them one way and they will conduct electricity like a metal. Make them another and they act as semiconductors, like the silicon used in transistors. Despite all this, their only employment at the moment is in quotidian things that need to be both light and stiff, such as surfboards and bicycle parts.Visionaries still have hopes for them, though. One such is Max Shulaker of Stanford University. Dr Shulaker wants to make computers out of them. And, as he describes in a paper in this week’s Nature, he has now done just that.The first nanotube computer is a simple device, consisting of 178 transistors rather than the hundreds of millions found in a contemporary silicon chip. It can handle only one bit of data (ie, a “1” or a “0”) at a time, whereas modern machines digest information in 32-bit or 64-bit chunks. And it can perform only one operation: subtracting one number from another and storing the answer in one of two places, depending on whether that answer is bigger or smaller than zero. But this is all a proper computer needs to be able to manage. Theoretically, Dr Shulaker’s machine is capable of doing anything from working out your taxes to playing “Minecraft”. It would just have to…

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Categories: The Economist

Tags: Carbon nanotube, Integrated circuit, Max Shulaker, transistor