Your news round-up from the big world of the
incredibly small. May 2002 edition
The
good old silicon chip, is getting to be, well, pretty old technology
when you get down to it. I mean, they've been around for longer than
New Zealand's Skyhawk fighter jets, and like the jets are close to
retirement age. Every 18 months they manage to double the speed of
the things (it'd be pretty amazing if we could do that with the
Skyhawks) but this can't keep going forever. Pretty soon the
marvelously complicated photographic tricks they use to etch the
little things will stop working because the details will be smaller
than the waves of light, probably sometime around 2011. What will
they think of next? Or will computers finally stop being obsolete
just after I buy a new one?
Well,
IBM have been working on heading the problem off in advance. I've
mentioned those nanotube things before; little tubes of carbon atoms
all rolled up like spools of atomic chicken wire (sounds a bit like a
pop group doesn't it?). IBM have been taking tubes just one layer of
atomic chicken wire thick and wedging them into silicon chips, as per
their picture on the right. If you think about the scale of things,
it's a bit like wedging modern microchips in circuits made from
ingots of cast iron, but it'll have to do for the moment. Anyway,
these nanotubes seemed to work a lot like transistors in tests, but
were a heck of a lot smaller. Now IBM have perfected the process to
the point where these new-fangled chicken wire transistors are
actually faster than the ones made of silicon. Looks like I'll be
needing new computers for a while yet.
Return
of The Old Fogeys
For you youngsters, the picture of the thing on the left is called
a "valve". To be precise it's a triode made by a
chap called Marconi who did a lot of early radio work. We stopped
using them a while ago because they were too big, too slow, and used
too much power.
But, some clever chaps at Agere Systems Inc. Have
discovered that if they can make really, really small ones with those
nanotube things, they speed up and don't use so much power. They
might even be another challenge to our current silicon chips.
The GM Reaper
The concept of genetic engineering, which is a form of
nanotechnology when you get right down to it, it making an impression
on New Zealand's political system. Us Kiwis are headed for one of
those political bunfights referred to as a general election, and the
release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into our environment
has been turned into a political issue. On the one hand we have a
party which will allow unspecified GMOs to be released, on the other
extreme a party that will not allow any to be released. Recent
discoveries such as accidentally modified superweeds in Canada and
the unexpected inclusion of additional genetic material in Monsato's
soya have not helped the case for releasing GMOs into the wild, and
the developing local organic producers say that it will cripple them.
This coupled with New Zealand's existing experience with introduced
organisms such as possums, rabbits, kahili ginger and the painted
apple moth gives voters a stark choice in the polling stations.
http://olliver.family.gen.nz/launchpad
28th May 2002 vik@olliver.family.gen.nz
Back
to the Launchpad Main Page