For what may possibly be my last ever blog post on this blog, I found an article that discusses the possibility of Ultra-efficient computers using Atomic scale manufacturing. That sentence alone is enough to grab anyone’s attention (It certainly got mine.) After reading the introduction, I discovered that this article is about saving the environment rather than just having really fast computers. However, that’s still great because something needs to be done about the environment and this could be it. The article states that today’s computers require enough power to release more than 1 gigatonne of carbon emissions per year. That is actually really bad. ACS Nano has a solution though. They are making computers that store more data, and use less power. You would think that this wouldn’t be possible without some kind of trade off, but they figured it out.
The attained this by manipulating singular atoms in order to produce “ultra dense memory arrays” which can store way more data in a smaller space. They have ran into an issue where bottleneck is apparent, so they are still trying to find a way to make this process more efficient. In order to conduct this process, scientists must use a technique called hydrogen lithography. This is a process in which they remove certain hydrogen atoms from a silicon surface in order to write more data. They demonstrated this technique on a 24-bit memory array, and the result was a 1000 times faster fabrication of atomic computers. This means that “real world” manufacturing can begin. According to ACS, this method would consume 100 times less power, making it a huge step in the right direction towards a cleaner Earth.
It was a pleasure reading this article considering it was very short and it had a lot of interesting information on it. I didn’t expect so many chemistry topics to be involved, but I love chemistry so that is okay. This will probably be my last blog post ever, so to my readers, you have been a great audience. Thank you.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191127090225.htm
From the blog CS@Worcester – My Life in Comp Sci by Tyler Rego and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.