Computer developers are obsessed with speed and power and are constantly looking for ways to promote faster processing and more main memory in a smaller area. IBM, for example, devised a new manufacturing process (called a silicon insulator) that has the effect of increasing the speed of a chip and reducing its power consumption. These chips released in 2001 are 30% faster.

DSP Chips: Processors for the Post-PC Era

Millions of people may be familiar with the slogan “Intel Inside” which draws attention to the main brand of microprocessor used in microcomputers. But they probably don’t know that they’re more likely to spend their days using another kind of chip: digital signal processors (DSPs), integrated circuits designed for high-speed data manipulation, made primarily by Texas Instruments but also by Lucent, Motorola and Analog communications and image manipulation. Primarily made by devices, DSPs are designed to manipulate digital signals in voice, music, and video, which is why they are found in pagers, cell phones, cars, hearing aids, and even washing machines.

Digital signal processing is present in only a fifth of the size of the $21 billion microprocessor business. But for most of the post-PC era, Internet and communications devices, which need to handle huge streams of real-world information such as sounds and images, are expected to supplant the personal computer. Therefore, in 10 years, DSPs may outsell microprocessors.

nanotechnology

Nanotechnology, nanoelectronics, nanostructures all start with a measurement known as the nanometer. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, which means that we are operating at the level of atoms and molecules. A human hair is approximately 100,000 nanometers in diameter.

In nanotechnology, molecules are used to create tiny machines to store data and perform tasks. Experts try to do nanofabrication by building tiny nanostructures, one atom or molecule at a time. When applied to chips and other electronic devices, the field is called nanoelectronics.

Today, scientists are trying to simulate the on/off of traditional transistors by creating transistor switches that manipulate a single electron, the subatomic particle that is the fundamental unit of electricity. In theory, a trillion of these electrons could be placed on a chip the size of a fingernail. Scientists have already forged layers of individual molecules into tiny computer components in devices called chemically assembled electronic devices, or CAENs. These machines would be billions of times more powerful than today’s personal computers.

CAEN components are supposed to be operational within 10 years. But computer makers are already reaping some benefits from nanotechnology, which is used to build read/write heads for hard drives, improving the speed with which computers can access data.

optical computing

Today’s computers are electronic, tomorrow’s may be optical or optoelectronic and use light, not electricity. With optical technology, a machine using lasers, lenses, and mirrors would represent data on/off codes with pulses of light.

Light is much faster than electricity. In fact, fiber-optic networks, which consist of hair-thin glass fibers instead of copper wires, can move information at speeds 3,000 times faster than conventional networks. However, the signals get bogged down when they have to be processed by silicon chips. Optical chips would remove the bottleneck. (Theoretically, it is conceivable someday that computers could operate even faster than the speed of light. For generations, physicists thought that nothing was faster than light moving in a vacuum at roughly 186,000 miles per second.)

DNA computing

Biotechnology could potentially be used to grow cultures of bacteria that, when exposed to light, emit a small electrical charge, for example. The properties of the biochip could be used to represent the digital on/off signals used in computing. Or a synthetic DNA strand could represent information as a pattern of molecules, and the information could be manipulated by subjecting it to precisely designed chemical reactions that could mark or elongate the strand. For example, instead of using binary, it could manipulate all four nucleic acids, which promises to process large numbers. This is a completely non-digital way of thinking about computing.

Imagine millions of nanomachines created from microorganisms that process information at the speed of light and send it along long-range pathways. What kind of changes could we expect with computers like that?

quantum computing

Sometimes called the “ultimate computer,” the quantum computer is based on quantum mechanics, the theory of physics that explains the erratic world of the atom. Whereas an ordinary computer stores information as 0s and 1s represented by electrical currents or voltages that are high or low, a quantum computer stores information using states of elementary particles. Scientists envision using the energized and relaxed states of individual atoms to represent data. For example, hydrogen atoms could be made to turn on and off like conventional computer transistors going from low-energy states (off) to high-energy states (on).

Other Possibilities: Molecular and Dot Computers

In the molecular computer, the silicon transistor is replaced with a single molecule. In the dot computer, the transistor is replaced by a single electron. These approaches, such as the mass production of wires and atomic insulators. There are no visible prototypes yet.