/ News
IBM betting carbon nanotubes can restore Moore’s Law by 2020
The ongoing collapse of Moore’s Law is one of the least reported stories in technology today. That old canard says that the number of transistors that’s possible to fit onto a chip will double every two years. Like a shark, our processing industry can only survive in its current form thanks to that constant forward motion — and with the rate of semiconductor advance now slowing, the industry could well slow down with it. Silicon is, at this point, totally incapable of providing any further advancement; a new material is needed, one that can be reliably laid down at scales well below 10 nanometers. For a long time, experts have argued that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are the most likely answer, and this week IBM announced it expects to have a commercial CNT chip ready by the year 2020.
When it comes to computer chips, size is everything. Our devices, be they smartphones or desktop towers, present a hard physical limit on space; so long as we are still switching physical transistors on and off to do computation, making devices faster means packing more transistors into the same physical space. Engineers have spent the last decade or so forecasting the end of silicon as a metal that could support much further miniaturization; its properties make it inherently difficult to lay down at the scales we’re beginning to require. But carbon nanotubes are just rolled up tubes of graphene, which is only a single atom thick; though engineers have been talking bout graphene as the future of transistors for a while now, IBM is the first to really put itself out there on the issue.
The first CNT transistors were built in the late 1990′s but since then we’ve made little progress in creating chips with billions of those transistors packed densely and — above all — affordably. IBM has already demonstrated the ability to create processors with about 10,000 transistors, but that’s still a long, long way off what we’ll need. The manufacturing process they’ve chosen for this project sees units of six CNTs acting as each transistor. They’re about 30 nanometers long and 1.4 wide, spaced eight nanometers apart — given their calculations, a CNT processor could be six times faster than a modern silicon chip for the same power draw.
The problem is the same as it’s ever been: it’s mechanically very difficult to pack things that closely together without losing quality and accuracy in manufacturing. One possible solution is to use labelled transistors that can be laid down at one scale but which will then self-assemble to pack even more tightly. It would be gut-punchingly expensive to replace all the manufacturing infrastructure that exists around making silicon chips, so much of the funding these days goes to finding ways old manufacturing tech could produce new chip tech.
It’s unclear whether IBM has made a specific breakthrough that led it to this announcement or just a general feeling of progress and meaningful forward movement. Either way, the company is upfront about the fact that if CNT computers don’t manage to make some sort of move by around the year 2020, the window of opportunity may close. Potentially competing technologies are also under development, from quantum computers to optical computers and beyond, and their potential to increase computational power is far greater than CNTs.
Still, carbon nanotubes, and their sister-material graphene, are by far the most likely candidate to replace silicon in the short term. If we don’t have a fundamentally different sort of chip design by the year 2020, we could see the computer hardware industry slow down markedly. And if even the computer business can’t thrive in the new economy, then there it’s official: in the new economy, there is absolutely no such thing as a safe bet.
Source: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/185688-ibm-betting-carbon-nanotubes-can-restore-moores-law-by-2020
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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